Whales have no financial incentive to find valuable minnows. Their upvotes are really just bets that a certain post will do well, and that's usually based on an author's past experience doing well. But it's not really unfair that the whales have no incentive to find minnows. It's the minnow's job to stand out and attract attention. Unfortunately, you can't do that by posting quality content. The only way to do it is to read the content of others and create relationships with people whose content you like. People who do that consistently will grow, and some will grow to whale status. But I really think that over the next year you'll see competition force down the size of these whales. (Unless they develop some sort of government that can provide them protection from that competition.)