Are there VC firms that invest labor instead of direct capital? It seems they could have a group of amazing, employed devs ready to hit the ground running, then continue on if the VC firm continues to invest. They could train the next tier of tech talent when the company could pay more competitive salaries, then step back to go to the next investment. This VC firm could give real equity in the firm to the techies, meaning the technologist could also benefit in the upside of whatever unicorns the firm invested in...
I think that this is generally more common in PE (investing with both capital and key labor roles) than VC.
That said, good VCs often have vast formal and informal networks of folks they can tap to work with a specific start up. Whether that talent is reliably good or not is a different issue.
