Wasp

Wasps are the original venture capitalists of the insect world—predatory investors who provision their offspring with paralyzed prey rather than building long-term food stores. Unlike bees that accumulate honey for winter, most wasps are solitary hunters who capture protein one prey item at a time. Each egg gets a targeted investment; there's no communal pool to draw from. It's high-touch, deal-by-deal investing where the parent wasp must assess each opportunity individually.

The Parasitoid Strategy

Parasitoid wasps represent nature's most ruthless investment thesis: lay eggs inside or on a living host, and let larvae consume the host from within. Over 100,000 species evolved this strategy independently. The host continues living while being consumed—kept alive precisely long enough to maximize resource extraction before the wasp larvae emerge. Some parasitoids even manipulate host behavior, turning victims into bodyguards or zombies that protect the parasite.

Parasitoid wasps don't just extract resources—they commandeer the host's operating system.

The business parallel is uncomfortably clear: hostile takeovers, leveraged buyouts that load companies with debt, and extraction-focused private equity all follow parasitoid logic. The target continues operating while value is systematically transferred to the acquirer.

Paper Wasps: Primitive Eusociality

Paper wasps sit between solitary and fully social insects. Queens dominate reproduction, but workers retain the ability to reproduce if the queen dies. This 'primitive eusociality' creates succession dynamics absent in honeybees where workers are reproductively sterile. Paper wasp colonies negotiate power through dominance hierarchies rather than chemical suppression—a political structure more like primate groups than insect colonies.

Fig Wasps: Obligate Mutualism

Fig wasps and fig trees are locked in the most extreme agricultural mutualism known. Each fig species has its own wasp species; neither can reproduce without the other. Wasps pollinate figs while laying eggs inside fig flowers. The relationship has persisted for 80 million years—longer than most business partnerships last. This co-dependence creates stability but also catastrophic vulnerability: if either partner fails, both go extinct.