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Merit — A distributed venture capital platform
Merit is a gamified and distributed Venture Capital platform and community where aspiring VCs can learn and practice the craft. Merit aims to make the venture capital industry more meritocratic.
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Absolutely @rrhoover, there are so few jobs available yet so many people willing to fill them. This imbalance results in funds and headhunters sticking to what they know. Think Stanford/McKinsey/Goldman... You can't even blame GPs for hiring more of the same, as all the people making up that group are bright, hardworking and passionate about the tech. Which is why we need a different way to surface people who might have the same skills, drive and commitment to a career in VC.
Exactly indeed! The aim is for people to get comfortable with structuring their thoughts about markets, products, technologies, achievements so far...
Awesome job @jacobclaerhout !! We're pursuing the same objective with @upcomingvc, let's discuss!
Nothing best than an insider to think, develop & launch this project! Congrats Jacob and please help raise awareness about VC & make it accessible to anyone who could be a good fit for the job!
I have been waiting for an amazing product like this. I dropped my mail for the beta!
Really glad that we are building something you have been wainting for, @psalmadek 👌
You can't be a capitalist and claim to aim for meritocratic standards - this is an inherent contradiction in capitalism. The object and goal of capitalism is to maximize profits on investment (including the annihilation of wealth through internal downsizing "creative destruction"), which is antithetical towards meritocracy. Meritocratic standards would emphasize the lack of wealth and social mobility, whereas you have one capitalist on their phone (probably on the toilet) doing performance evaluations, which they can probably do on an Airtable, for those who became desperate enough to sell their time, labor, and creativity for a chance to advance their product through a non-democratic, anti-labor selection process.
As demonstrated with this product, which enables a privileged individual to choose winners and losers based on the Capitalists determined merits, nothing reflects the equity of variable capital (the actual work done by humans versus the developed constant capital) to secure an invested future into their product and welfare. Hence, distribution of venture capital on a specific platform is, as inevitable, a mode of capital accumulation to the largest stakeholders and the exclusion of earned profit from the intellectual capital stolen from workers in deprecated products (VCs have a portfolio of sold ideas to extract and craft a more profitable business).
If all performance indicators lead towards prioritizing VC portfolio items that demonstrate a higher return over others, then merit is thrown out the window since the only talent needed is maximizing profit over lets say, securing labor and ownership of the creatives who built the original portfolio item (they become disposable). One might think they have the "liberty to choose" their time/money/effort to have their labor commodified and sold like this, but they don't because of the anti-meritocratic capitalist system. If these labor indicators are disregarded, as is the case with scoring features provided, Merit becomes newspeak for whom gets to eat at night. A nightmare model of simplicity for the privileged few to pick and choose ideas that make the most for them and not the most for others.
If you really wanted to distribute venture capital, abolish private finance systems and private investment firms (the monopoly of money and land), then work your way towards tariffs and patents. Until then, there can never be merit in capitalism.
@ravi_bajnath You are aware that the word "meritocratic" was invented by a socialist to describe capitalism right?
@victorbjorklund Yes, The Rise of Meritocracy (which was a satire) and I wouldn't extend all of Michael Young's evaluations as socialist (like Orwell). His work on urbanization and cooperatives are still an excellent study, yet nested itself in a State paradigm.
Hi PH,
After years of being a Product Hunt power user, I am very proud to introduce you to Merit. Being an early stage Venture Capitalist, I learned that VC is a fascinating yet opaque industry that lacks diversity and is less meritocratic than it claims to be.
In order to change that, we need to change the venture recruiting equation, which is very hard as there is no structured way to surface great and diverse people. In an effort to change this, I am building Merit.
Merit is a distributed Venture Capital platform where aspiring VCs can practice the craft by doing a proxy of the actual job and build their own track-record. They join a virtual and anonymous team of people who want to actively learn about early stage investing.
People gain points for finding exciting companies, analysing interesting opportunities and trends, providing constructive feedback towards fellow participants and entrepreneurs and creating value adding content. The higher the quality of the submitted dealflow, the better the analyses, and the more valuable the feedback, the more points you'd earn.
Top performing candidates will get access to curated VC job listings, headhunters and get introduced to VCs who want to get to know you and the insights you've built.
If you want to learn more about Venture Capital to see if you'd enjoy and be good it, please sign-up for beta-access: www.merit-vc.com
If you are a VC and you would like to get to know the top performers and their work, please let us know: https://forms.gle/rY2H3YYRrumqtndt9
I would love to have your take on what I am building, so please share your thoughts below. Thanks!
Love the mission you're on @jacobclaerhout making venture capital more meritocratic :)
Gamification is such a cool way to bring new life to something. This looks awesome!
Thanks @sneddymobbin, in all fairness we took a lot of inspiration from the fascinating dynamics powering @danielgross his https://pioneer.app/
Congrats @jacobclaerhout, found out about this late but it takes a great deal of empathy to build and launch something like this ! Time to stir it all up, starting with good old France ! Go Merit
We often hear about diversity in vc but few concrete plans are set up to make it happen!
Then comes @merit_vc
Thanks and Congrats @JacobClaerhout for this amazing initiative.
All the best for the futur of @merit_vc
Congrats for the launch @jacobclaerhout, I’m looking forward to a world where more high-potential people would directly build innovative companies or help finance them rather than playing the signalling game going through the same old paths!
Happy Alpha Tester here,
I have followed Merit and its progress closely since I first heard about Jacob's meritable vision on breaking open VC for all. Merit has come a long way since and I too believe that it is now ready to fulfill its ambitious mission! I found the close feedback cycles and gamification addictive and just plainly a whole lot of fun. Long story short: ambitious vision and killer execution. Go Merit 🚀🚀🚀
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