My attention has been drawn by the behavior of Softbank, probably one of the venture capitalists, or as a minimum the largest investment funds into unicorn start-ups. This sprawling investor has stakes in many companies which are not known by their best ethical behavior( Uber, DoorDash, WeWork…), and does not seem much concerned by those aspects (read particularly recent news that looks like patent troll behavior in ‘A SoftBank-owned company used Theranos patents to sue over COVID-19 tests‘ or ‘SoftBank Owned Patent Troll, Using Monkey Selfie Law Firm, Sues To Block Covid-19 Testing, Using Theranos Patents‘)
The point which seems quite obvious is that while we start complaining about possible monopolistic behavior of companies like the GAFAM, this type of behavior also seems to exist with some major funds. Softbank is allied by the Saudi Arabian sovereign fund in the Vision Fund, the largest venture fund around. And its behavior seems to to try to build companies that could be one day in a sort of monopoly situation and then milk it. Unethical behaviors in the companies in their portfolios do not seem to faze this fund and its main contributors. It takes only public uproar for refraining some of those behaviors.
Therefore, if we manage collectively to do something to curb the monopolistic tendencies of the GAFAM and largest unicorns, we may as well do something about the monopolistic tendencies of some of the largest investors that are behind unicorns and the largest start-ups of the age.
