In fact it says so in the article:
> “Investors are missing out on making a lot of money”, eye-rolls Sofie Blakstad, founder of humanitarian blockchain, HiveOnline. Blakstad has worked for eight major banks, built five core banking systems, written two books, and founded one hell of a fintech. She’s also the person the UN calls when they need a consultant. That SHE struggles to secure funding blows my mind.
This exacerbates biases significantly, because you're not only trying to select for success, but also for next-round fundability. So it makes perfect sense to say "I think you're a great founder with a great idea and fantastic prototype. _I'm_ not prejudiced, but I think other VCs are too biased for you to be successful, so I won't invest."
I've heard this multiple times personally, to the point that I've been advised to bring in a more traditional CTO and take a VPEng/CSO role.
Systemic inefficiencies like this one usually require regulatory or systemic assistance to reach a new, more profitable, equilibrium.
I've been quite surprised at who true this is. A majority of the large rounds of layoffs we've been seeing lately (an almost weekly occurrence at some point) was in most part driven by no more investments coming in for the foreseeable future, and companies needing to make drastic cuts for this reality.
I didn't really appreciate how dependent companies were on funding rounds to keep up.