[CANCELLED] Catherine Bracy presents ‘World Eaters’

Update 5/5/25: due to unforeseen circumstances, this event has been cancelled and will not be rescheduled. We apologize for any inconvenience!

Third Place Books welcomes Founder and CEO of TechEquity Catherine Bracy for a discussion of her new book World Eaters: How Venture Capital is Cannibalizing the Economy. This book offers a window into how the most pernicious aspects of the venture capital ethos is reaching all areas of our lives, into everything from healthcare to food to entertainment to the labor market and leaving a trail of destruction in its wake.

This event is free and open to the public. For important updates, RSVP is highly recommended in advance. This event will include a public signing and time for audience Q&A. Sustain our author series by purchasing a copy of the featured book!

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About World Eaters. . .

The venture capital playbook, which has become dogma not just in tech but increasingly across the entire economy, causes unique harms to society, the economy, democracy, and in the lives of everyday people. Like late-stage capitalism on steroids, it calls for companies to seek total domination and to do it as fast as possible. What follows is a cascade of negative outcomes for society as a whole and the economy at large. Uber and Lyft steamrolling regulators. Facebook and YouTube relying on a revenue model that optimizes for misinformation and radicalization. The intractable diversity problem in the tech industry. Worker exploitation.

These threats on their own are bad enough. But the practices of the venture capital world have begun to bleed into the rest of the economy creating staggering inequality, vanishing competition, and a redefinition of American entrepreneurship that shoehorns many founders with good ideas into an ill-fitting VC model, which can push their startups to failure before they even get off the ground.

Luckily, it isn’t all doom and gloom. There are investors and founders, like Indie.vc and the companies aligned with the Zebra Movement, who have proven that another path is possible. But how do we create the conditions so that their version of capitalism – one that fosters competition, innovation, sustainability, and inclusive growth – can thrive? What regulatory guardrails do we need to implement to prevent not just the worst behaviors of Facebook and Amazon but the rise of the rest? Readers will come away with deeper insights into the urgent decisions we must make about how to regulate tech.

There is a future where a growing tech sector is welcomed as a boon for everyone rather than a threat to our economy, our public health and democracy as a whole. But to get there, we need to reckon with venture capital and the corrupted system it has created.

Catherine Bracy is a civic technologist and community organizer whose work focuses on the intersection of technology and political and economic inequality. She is the Founder and CEO of TechEquity, was previously Code for America’s senior director of Partnerships and Ecosystem, and founded Code for All. During the 2012 election cycle she was director of Obama for America’s Technology Field Office in San Francisco, the first of its kind in American political history. She is a prolific public speaker for places like Axios and the Personal Democracy Forum. Her TED Talk “Why Good Hackers Make Good Citizens” has almost one million views. Her work has been highlighted in the LA Times, New York Times, and NPR. (Photo credit: Anya McInroy)

About Third Place Books

Founded in 1998 in Lake Forest Park, Washington, Third Place Books is dedicated to the creation of a community around books and the ideas inside them. With locations in Lake Forest Park and Seattle’s Ravenna and Seward Park neighborhoods, Third Place Books is proud to serve the entire Seattle metro area. Learn more about their event series at thirdplacebooks.com/events.