There's a response I keep thinking about. Someone pushed back on my piece about capitalism, and they made a great point: some of the most delicious recipes have their roots in poverty. Buffalo chicken wings.

They're right. And it changes how I think about a few things.

Reform isn't top-down. It never has been.

The question I was asked: is it even possible to restore market integrity without a full overhaul of the relationship between markets, government, and society?

Probably not. Not at the macro level. Regulatory capture is real. Hype cycles and inflated valuations that have nothing to do with actual market fundamentals — that's real too. The funding ecosystem, in many ways, has drifted from the capitalist spirit it's supposed to embody.

But here's what I believe: you don't have to fix the whole system to build something right within it. Redbud was started with that premise.

The buffalo wing lesson.

Buffalo wings were invented in 1964 at the Anchor Bar in Buffalo, New York. The wing was trash — the part of the chicken nobody wanted. Cheap. Overlooked. A resourceful cook turned scarcity into something extraordinary. Decades later, that technique and flavor profile were absorbed into fine-dining menus around the world. Elites didn't create it. They discovered it after the fact.

This happens constantly. Jazz. Hip-hop. The best street food in the world. Constraint is a forcing function. Necessity sharpens. The innovation came from people who had no choice but to make something out of what they had.

Which brings me back to the question of whether innovation is actually tied to economic structure.

I think it's more complicated than either side admits.

Capitalism creates the conditions for innovation to scale — access to capital, incentive to build, the ability to capture the upside of your own risk. But it doesn't always create the conditions for innovation to originate. Some of the most creative problem-solving happens at the margins, in communities that capitalism has underserved.

The failure isn't capitalism. It’s access.

What this means for us:

We can't fix the macro entanglement between markets, government, and policy from where we sit. But we can control who gets capital, who gets taken seriously, and who gets the chance to build.

Founders strengthened by struggle aren't just a feel-good thesis. They're often the most resourceful operators we meet. They've been making something out of nothing their whole lives. That's who we feel confident to bet on.

The reform we can actually do isn't legislative. It's allocative. It's showing up in rooms and geographies where capital hasn't historically gone. It's questioning the pattern-matching that causes investors to fund the same profiles over and over. It's being honest that the funding ecosystem has its own version of incumbent protection — and deciding not to participate in it.

Buffalo wings didn't need a government grant to become iconic. They needed someone to stop overlooking what was already there.

Redbud VC backs founders strengthened by struggle. If you've operated under constraints, pitch us today.