Venture labor stood in for venture capital—both in the real sense of resources needed to build companies and in terms of seemingly being an accessible option for wealth accumulation of middle-class knowledge workers. This plays into the political right’s rhetoric of the “ownership society” that employs the middle-class dream of profiting from ownership. Whether from one’s labor or one’s home, the false dream of the ownership society promises that generating profits in a capitalist society is as easy as cashing a paycheck or paying the mortgage. So-called ownership society ownership comes without power, just as the stock option holders of Silicon Alley exercised little power over their companies’ choices. Similarly, the U.S. housing market crisis exposed the culpability of middle-class investments in a global financial marketplace.