Despite pretty much everything about how a startup is financed changing, the dynamic between the founders and funders has not. I think that means that it is more than an educational issue, it must be a structural one.
" ... As a VC at a top-tier Sand Hill Road firm told me during a pitch several years ago when describing a conceptual feature in Simple that would let users easily and regularly donate a portion of their savings to charity, “let’s not waste time on that stuff; we’re here to make money” ... ".
There are a breed of VC's who project themselves as if their sole purpose in life is to help entrepreneurs realize their dreams and that there is a higher purpose for their VC avatar. Some believe it and mean it, and some pretend (It is important to keep up the pretenses in this business lest you get shunned by all starry-eyed entrepreneurs who come to valley to change the world). VC's exist to help their investors make money. They have a fiduciary duty to do so. When you are giving away a good part of your life (sleep, money) in pursuit of a dream, and getting into a financial transaction with VCs to do so; It is vital for you to understand how they operate, how they make decisions, are incentivized to behave, and also be cognizant of their true (ulterior?) motives. VC's are a vital part of the startup eco-system. I am not against them or how they operate. They are smart enough to be politically right and make themselves desirable to entrepreneurs. All I am trying to say there is usually information/knowledge/expectation asymmetry (as pointed out in the article) when engineers are getting into financial transactions with VCs, and that they need to be cognizant and work on ways to mitigate this. [Edits for typos/grammer. Added two sentences at the end]
Anyway, that digression aside, I am not sure if the information asymmetry is the whole story here. These articles (and books and talks and etc.) meant to educate founders so that VCs don't screw another generation of them have been written since, at least, the 70s. Either nobody reads them or it just doesn't matter when they do. If the latter, maybe we need a better understanding of the problem so we can solve it.
That could be disproved if it turned out serial entrepreneurs have bad experiences at similar rates to rookies.
I don't think that's enough of a manifesto to inspire systemic change, though.
I've worked with plenty of seed and A-stage investors in SV, though, and found most of them to be focused on being helpful to founders--you have to be, and have more opportunity to be, when you're working with people starting their first company. In my experience it's the later stage firms that are harder on founders. Their attitude--not to be an apologist--is that everyone at the table is an adult and can look out for themselves. The best thing you can do as a founder or startup exec when you start talking to Series B and later firms is
(a) Have a seed or angel investor who can give you good advice (and who, since they were early investors, has an economic situation closer to the Common than to the Series B Preferred) and ask them for advice; and
(b) Have options, including: other Series B firms, the potential to get a bridge or extension round from your seed and A folk, possibly being acquired, and extending your runway by cutting burn.