How about the workers and the customers ??

That’s why I am a fan of crowdfunding with utility tokens.

People on HN have to realize there is more to capitalism than shareholder capitalism and extracting rents from ecosystems ;-)

The thing about software is it's remarkably cheap in the grand scheme of things. To choose two random modern examples, Signal and Lemmy both got their start with a little bit of funding from nonprofits. Signal then basically funded its bills with a Whatsapp consulting contract and now it pays for a CEO that goes around doing prime TV appearances where she shoots down politicians who are trying to rob you of your freedom. That's a hell of a story arc.

That's a bit shortsighted.

There's good margins in any software that people want to use. There's money in Nextcloud hosting, Matomo services, or Bitcoin. All of which are open source projects that attempt(or attempted to) put power back in hands of users. There are many more examples.

VC will gladly fund a business model with solid margins. They often prefer those that might get a monopoly, grow exponential etc. sure. But it's certainly not the only mode.