Capital Builds Infrastructure. Ideas Build Possibility.
On the currency of meaning, the power of perception, and how language determines what futures we can see
In Dave Whorton’s book Another Way, there’s a moment that crystallizes how power actually works in Silicon Valley. He describes sitting in on conversations at Kleiner Perkins, watching John Doerr and his partners “literally talking about how they wanted to design the future of the world, based on their money, their networks, and their ability to influence perceptions about what should happen.”
Not waiting for entrepreneurs. Not reacting to market forces. Designing the future.
This is the game. Venture capital doesn’t just fund innovation—it architects what gets built, what problems get solved, what kind of future we collectively inhabit. The trillion-dollar companies, the decacorns, the endless parade of unicorns—they’re not accidents of innovation. They’re the outputs of deliberate capital allocation married to network effects and perception management.
And they shape everything: infrastructure, legislation, culture, possibility itself.
So here’s the question that haunts anyone who cares about the human future of technology: What do you do if you don’t have the money?
The Asymmetry of Power
The imbalance is real and growing. While VCs and tech giants deploy billions to shape regulation, build platforms that become de facto public infrastructure, and fund think tanks that manufacture consensus, the rest of us watch our feeds, tap our screens, and wonder why the future feels like something happening to us rather than for us.
The usual responses—regulation, antitrust, digital rights movements—matter, but they’re reactive. They’re playing defense. And in the time it takes to regulate one platform or break up one monopoly, three more have been funded and scaled.
So what’s the actual counterweight to capital?
Ideas as Infrastructure
It has to be stories. Insights. Language that sticks. Ideas that linger. Narratives that demand retelling.
This isn’t wishful thinking—it’s how power has always been contested. Before capital could buy the future, ideas shaped what was possible. The printing press didn’t just distribute information; it distributed frames for understanding power. Civil rights movements didn’t outspend their opponents; they created moral clarity that made certain futures unthinkable and others inevitable.
The power of narrative to shift culture, change minds, and build movements is the counterweight to capital. Ideas are the currency that doesn’t require a cap table or a board seat to wield influence.
Notice the language we use: vision, insight, foresight, seeing the future, perception management. These aren’t accidental metaphors. They reveal something fundamental—that ideas literally change what we can perceive as possible. When we reframe how we see a problem, we unlock solutions that were always there but remained invisible under the old frame. The work of shifting narrative is the work of expanding what becomes visible, thinkable, fundable.
When venture capital shapes reality through resource allocation, humanists shape possibility through meaning-making.
The Stakes
The question isn’t whether ideas can compete with money. Obviously they can—history is littered with well-funded futures that never materialized because the story didn’t work, and underfunded movements that won because the narrative became irresistible.
The question is whether we’re telling stories compelling enough to make the money follow different dreams.
Every time a VC funds a company, they’re betting on a story about what should exist. Every time a platform shapes behavior through design, it’s encoding values into infrastructure. Every time regulation lags behind innovation, it’s because the story of technological inevitability is more compelling than the story of collective choice.
But those are all stories. And stories can be rewritten.
What This Looks Like
Consider what happened to cleantech. By 2016, it was officially dead. MIT published a report literally titled “Venture Capital and Cleantech: The Wrong Model for Clean Energy Innovation.” Less than 10% of cleantech companies founded after 2007 generated returns. Investors declared the sector a graveyard.
But then something shifted. Not the technology—the story. Instead of “sustainability” and “saving the planet,” the narrative became “energy independence,” “economic necessity,” and “the trillion-dollar green transition.” Same solar panels. Same batteries. Different frame.
By 2024, clean energy investment hit $2 trillion annually—nearly double fossil fuel investment. The technology barely changed. The story did. And the capital followed.
This week on The Tech Humanist Show: I talk with Tom Chi—who led the Google Glass team at Google X before founding climate VC firm At One Ventures—about exactly this shift, how narrative redirects billions in venture funding, and what it means to deploy capital as a tool for planetary restoration. Tom’s journey from augmenting human vision to reframing how we see our planetary future is a perfect example of how the language we use shapes the futures we can imagine. Listen to the full conversation here.
This is what it looks like in practice. It means refusing to treat “tech-driven” and “human-centered” as opposing forces. It means insisting that the future of technology is a design choice, not a destiny. It means naming the power dynamics clearly—not to demonize capital, but to understand it as one force among many.
It means building new language for what we want. Not just what we’re against, but what we’re for. Not just criticizing surveillance capitalism, but articulating what flourishing looks like in a digitally mediated world. Not just resisting AI’s excesses, but imagining AI that genuinely extends human capability rather than replacing human judgment.
It means recognizing that every essay, every conversation, every frame we introduce into the discourse is infrastructure. Ideas compound. They influence the next generation of founders, the next wave of regulation, the next set of funding decisions.
The Long Game
Venture capital plays the long game by betting billions on specific futures. Humanists have to play it by betting insights on different futures—and then making those insights so resonant, so useful, so inevitable-feeling that they become the water we swim in.
This isn’t about fighting money. It’s about winning the imagination. Winning the moral clarity. Winning history.
Because in the end, the future doesn’t belong to whoever has the most capital. It belongs to whoever tells the story everyone believes.
About Kate O’Neill
Kate O’Neill is a Tech Humanist, global keynote speaker, and award-winning author of What Matters Next and A Future So Bright. She advises Fortune 500 leaders, governments, and organizations on making technology decisions that serve humanity—not just markets.
Named to the Thinkers50, the global ranking of top management thinkers, Kate has been featured in WIRED, the New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal. She hosts The Tech Humanist Show, exploring how technology shapes human experience.
Learn more at koinsights.com
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