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The 99% (of startups)

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Re: The 99% (of startups)

#121

Post by chongli »

coffeemug wrote: post #68
downandout wrote: post #64

This gives an interesting glimpse into the prognostication abilities of supposedly brilliant VC's. It also shows the the near-impossibility of cashing in private company shares, at least through VC's. In addition to this story, the Sony hack revealed that Evan Spiegel of Snapchat wanted to cash in about $40 million worth of shares just after he spurned Facebook's $3 billion offer. He was also roundly rejected. Had so…

> This gives an interesting glimpse into the prognostication abilities of supposedly brilliant VC's. The question isn't whether VCs are brilliant according to some absolute metric. The question is whether they deploy capital better than random chance. The numbers show that top ten VCs consistently do.

Texas sharpshooter fallacy[0]. The specific problem with your argument is that you didn't set forth a hypothesis that would predict which VCs would be successful before they'd all started investing their money.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_sharpshooter_fallacy

Re: The 99% (of startups)

#122

Post by asveikau »

coldtea wrote: post #57
sehr wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would that be depressing?

Well, for people upholding certain cultural values like me, which are not exactly too far-fetched, it's pretty obvious why an era where people watch live gaming in droves is depressing when contrasted with the decline of journalism. I'd rather there was a citizenry that read the Washington Post more than watching others play video games (or NFL or whatever) more. Maybe people would have a better handle of politics, a…

How much do you read the Washington Post? Personally, I wouldn't put it on a pedestal.

Take this example from a quick Google search (admittedly it's a partisan source) http://www.thenation.com/article/eleven-years-how-washington...

Personally, as a DC native now living far away, I think a citizenry reading WaPo seems like a frightening bunch of conformists. Yes I am aware of what they did in the 70s. Different paper now.

Re: The 99% (of startups)

#123

Post by ThomPete »

incepted wrote: post #107
ThomPete wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or to paraphrase Horowitz. Building a startup is hard. You will have to stand up to a lot of people who will tell you everything you are doing wrong. If you care a lot about social signals you probably shouldn't be an entrepreneur.

Then again, 99% of the people telling you what you're building will never work are right.

Sure there are no certainties. But you won't know if you don't try.

Re: The 99% (of startups)

#124

Post by gharbad »

jacquesm wrote: post #84
nostrademons wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that you're taking the emotional tone of my message differently than I intended it because I use the word "unfair" differently from how many people do. To me, it just means "Something not shared by many people; a trait that may gain you certain privileges that not everyone possesses." It's a valueless judgment, because I've already come to terms with business (and the world) being unfair. I could use the word…

Fair enough :) It would make communication easier if you put such creative uses of words up front. I'm not familiar with Peter Thiels use of the word 'unfair', but the doesn't get to creatively re-define the words we use either. Unfair has a very negative connotation. > And it's not like life has turned out badly for me in the meantime anyway. :-) Excellent :)

Peter Thiel used the word 'unfair' as you would expect, in the context of saying that monopolies are successful for exactly the same reasons that they are unfair. And that, as a founder, people should be looking to build monopolies (which are unfair by definition).

Re: The 99% (of startups)

#126

Post by downandout »

serge2k wrote: post #117
downandout wrote: post #64

This gives an interesting glimpse into the prognostication abilities of supposedly brilliant VC's. It also shows the the near-impossibility of cashing in private company shares, at least through VC's. In addition to this story, the Sony hack revealed that Evan Spiegel of Snapchat wanted to cash in about $40 million worth of shares just after he spurned Facebook's $3 billion offer. He was also roundly rejected. Had so…

and they would have an eaasier time getting rid of 200 million worth of private shares right?

No, but it is reasonably likely that Snapchat will have a liquidity event at some point in the next couple of years.

Re: The 99% (of startups)

#127

Post by Estragon »

6stringmerc wrote: post #70
downandout wrote: post #64

This gives an interesting glimpse into the prognostication abilities of supposedly brilliant VC's. It also shows the the near-impossibility of cashing in private company shares, at least through VC's. In addition to this story, the Sony hack revealed that Evan Spiegel of Snapchat wanted to cash in about $40 million worth of shares just after he spurned Facebook's $3 billion offer. He was also roundly rejected. Had so…

The way you phrase this reminds me of what I studied happening in the hedge fund world, in that some of the 'top performer' funds only out-performed the market due to insider trading. Galleon (Raj - convicted), SAC (sanctioned), and probably a handful more that got spooked out of the avenue of enrichment. It almost seems - almost - like there may be a similar insular community whereby those who feel like piling in wi…

It's fascinating to me that many startups put their crown jewels on github, a company with an inexplicably high valuation due to investments from some of the most successful VC companies. Don't they worry about exactly the kind of insider trading you're talking about, or worse?

Same goes for slack.

Re: The 99% (of startups)

#128

Post by xiaoma »

The interesting question to me is if Twitch would have done as well if he hadn't gotten rejected 9 months earlier. Unfortunately we can't spin up another universe, alter that one variable and run a test.

Re: The 99% (of startups)

#129

Post by akg_67 »

zaidf wrote: post #112
sokoloff wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would he? He wanted the whole company and was spurned. What incentive would there be to then reward the founder with 2 commas of personal liquidity? Zuck's not trying to make small side investments personally that might enrich him but would certainly cause questions of conflict of interest with his CEO role at FB.

Pretty sure the fb board wouldn't have a problem with Zuck getting any in into one of their top competitors. Zuck bleeds fb and a minority stake worth a fraction of his net worth isn't going to negatively impact his judgement. It's pretty common for companies to get minority stakes in competitors to get an in. Granted that is much more common in the public sector and sometimes sews the seed for a hostile takeover. Th…

> It's pretty common for companies to get minority stakes in competitors to get an in.

Do you have an example of this? It will be conflict of interest and may bring anti-trust issues. No competitor will allow access to confidential information and board proceedings to be observed by competitor.

I have only seen this happening when two companies settle some legal claims (ex: QTM-Data Domain) or form partnership (not competitors, ex: MSFT-FB) when one party is private/startup and other public. Typically public company will divest the stake when startup have IPO.

Re: The 99% (of startups)

#130

Post by wlievens »

jacquesm wrote: post #84
nostrademons wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that you're taking the emotional tone of my message differently than I intended it because I use the word "unfair" differently from how many people do. To me, it just means "Something not shared by many people; a trait that may gain you certain privileges that not everyone possesses." It's a valueless judgment, because I've already come to terms with business (and the world) being unfair. I could use the word…

Fair enough :) It would make communication easier if you put such creative uses of words up front. I'm not familiar with Peter Thiels use of the word 'unfair', but the doesn't get to creatively re-define the words we use either. Unfair has a very negative connotation. > And it's not like life has turned out badly for me in the meantime anyway. :-) Excellent :)

"Unfair Advantage" compares to "Creative Destruction" that way. Neither mean what an un uninformed reading of the word pairings would suggest.
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