almost all of my VC friends agree that venture investing is too crowded, that the returns are getting competed away almost all of my founder friends agree that the only reliable sources of funding for risky early ideas are rich people who angel invest as a hobby and accelerators like YC -- many of whom repeatably earn returns vastly greater than venture firms it'd be one thing if everyone acknowledged this gap and attributed it to, say, the downstream incentives of big funds earning big management fees but most people who aren't founders genuinely seem surprised to learn that pre-seed capital is scarce