“Readers . . . will find a real-life 'The Office,' Silicon Valley version, alternately comical and poignant.”―New York Times​

This systematic analysis of everyday life inside a tech startup dissects the logic of venture capital and its consequences for entrepreneurs, workers, and societies.
 
In recent years, dreams about our technological future have soured as digital platforms have undermined privacy, eroded labor rights, and weakened democratic discourse. In light of the negative consequences of innovation, some blame harmful algorithms or greedy CEOs. Behind the Startup focuses instead on the role of capital and the influence of financiers. Drawing on nineteen months of participant-observation research inside a successful Silicon Valley startup, this book examines how the company was organized to meet the needs of the venture capital investors who funded it.
 
Investors push startups to scale as quickly as possible to inflate the value of their asset. Benjamin Shestakofsky shows how these demands create organizational problems that managers solve by combining high-tech systems with low-wage human labor. With its focus on the financialization of innovation, Behind the Startup explains how the gains generated by these companies are funneled into the pockets of a small cadre of elite investors and entrepreneurs. To promote innovation that benefits the many rather than the few, Shestakofsky compellingly argues that we must focus less on fixing the technology and more on changing the financial infrastructure that supports it.

“Readers . . . will find a real-life 'The Office,' Silicon Valley version, alternately comical and poignant.” * New York Times *
"Behind the Startup: How Venture Capital Shapes Work, Innovation, and Inequality is vital and timely reading for professional and non-professional readers with an interest in economics, venture capitalism, income inequality, and corporate evaluations." * Midwest Book Review *
 "Benjamin Shestakofsky’s new book Behind the Startup: How Venture Capital Shapes Work, Innovation, and Inequality gives an experiential account . . . providing a first-person glimpse into how the imperatives of venture capital determine the modalities of working life inside a start-up." * Los Angeles Review of Books *
“Offers organizational scholars a critical view of the idolized, if ephemeral, organizational form that is the VC-backed startup. Along the way, readers will find new research questions in the aspirations (and desperations) of the small companies that may one day dominate markets.” * Administrative Science Quarterly *

Benjamin Shestakofsky is Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania, where he is affiliated with AI at Wharton and the Center on Digital Culture and Society.