Secondary shops flooded with unicorn sellers • Hacker News Board

Re: Secondary shops flooded with unicorn sellers

#131

Post by adventured » Sat, Feb 20, 2016, 6:12 AM UTC

MicroBerto wrote: post #62

JavaScriptrr wrote: post #9

The last couple of years, everytime someone would ask the cliché 'is there a bubble?' Question to a VC, they all waved it away. The questions were legit because of the insane valuations that have been thrown around. How often in History have companies like MagicLeap for example, got to billion+ valuation before ever launching a product. Evernote is a legit business, yes but same story. Blown up by investors. The bubb…

The unicorn valuation bubble seems to be cracking, sure, but what does that mean for the average tech employee? Average citizen? I'm concerned but still not convinced this will shock the rest of the economy, at least not all on its own.

It's almost entirely irrelevant to the rest of the economy. That is not an exaggeration.

During the dotcom bubble crash, Cisco all by itself destroyed more market cap from top to bottom than the entire unicorn bubble is worth combined (and that's before inflation adjusting for 15 years).

This current tiny mess? It's hardly even a single line sideshow to the rest of the US or global economy, what's going on in China, the commodity markets, negative interest rates in Europe or Japan, etc. A ~1% value drop in just the US residential housing market is worth as much as every unicorn combined.

Re: Secondary shops flooded with unicorn sellers

#132

Post by eru » Sat, Feb 20, 2016, 7:28 AM UTC

nickgrosvenor wrote: post #127

eru wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? If foreigners want to buy stuff, we call that exports. Just produce more of the stuff they want to buy. Ie build more apartments (= higher houses) in SV.

It doesn't work like that with housing, it's not a widget, it's fixed (to some degree)

Why? Especially SV has lots of tiny bungalows were you could build skyscrapers.

Re: Secondary shops flooded with unicorn sellers

#133

Post by danjayh » Sat, Feb 20, 2016, 7:30 AM UTC

nostrademons wrote: post #92

enraged_camel wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you should both put your money where your mouths are: longbets.org

Don't even need Longbets; just invest in or short the stock market.

Agreed. I've done that in the past and done quite well, but when I got married I dumped all my non-retirement portfolio. 6% guaranteed return paying down student debt (plus getting rid of payments, which hadn't been something I'd dealt with before) beats playing games in the stock market for me. Plus, I like to make my bets while the market is already on the way down ... during the last recession I started buying on the way down (after prices had already dropped quite a way), and stopped when the market got back to where I'd started, which worked out quite well. I did most of this in my 401k and IRAs (to the limits allowed by the contribution rules), so I also scored tax benefits :). Biggest non-retirement bet was buying a house in early 2011, which also turned out to be a decent thing to have done in my market ... although I think that there is a significant possibility that the gains in value due to the market will be wiped out in the future.

Re: Secondary shops flooded with unicorn sellers

#134

Post by tajen » Sat, Feb 20, 2016, 8:41 AM UTC

zardo wrote: post #17

jluxenberg wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Side note: You're considered an "accredited investor" if you made $200k/year in each of the prior two years and expect a similar income in the current year. https://www.investor.gov/news-alerts/investor-bulletins/inve... So, not necessarily just "wealthy" individuals.

So... "incomey" individuals then?

The 5% percentile of US population in terms of yearly income.

Re: Secondary shops flooded with unicorn sellers

#135

Post by leroy_masochist » Sat, Feb 20, 2016, 8:41 AM UTC

gyardley wrote: post #71

dpflan wrote: post #4

Has any HNer participated in such a secondary sale? I think it could be informative to describe the experience, whom you dealt with, how a price was agreed upon, how your company discussed secondary sales, etc.

I'd just keep your LinkedIn profile up to date with a clear indication that you might have an interesting amount of stock (co-founder, executive, early employee, etc.) and that you're no longer with the company. When secondary brokers have more buyers than sellers of a particular private stock, they come looking for you - and that's the time when you want to do your selling, not when people are freaking out and you'r…

Understand how this could help you find a buyer, but if I were in this situation I'm not sure whether I'd want to put that on my LinkedIn profile.

Re: Secondary shops flooded with unicorn sellers

#136

Post by SturgeonsLaw » Sat, Feb 20, 2016, 9:24 AM UTC

13thLetter wrote: post #82

pfarnsworth wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The money under Bush went to the Iraq war, which benefited the "big guys", not the small guys. The small guys have yet to ever benefit from anything.

> The money under Bush went to the Iraq war, Not really. The Iraq and Afghanistan wars together cost something on the order of $750 billion, which was less than one year of stimulus spending at the beginning of the current administration.

Add another zero to that and you're closer to the real figure, which doesn't even include ongoing expenses like the ramping up of the domestic security apparatus and the surveillance industrial complex created in the wars' wake.

ARRA didn't even crack a trillion.

Re: Secondary shops flooded with unicorn sellers

#137

Post by junto » Sat, Feb 20, 2016, 9:45 AM UTC

Here comes the gold rush and anything else people believe they can secure their money and weather the storm.

The trick now is to work out where the bottom of the market crash is going to be, and cash in on the companies that will survive this next recession, but whose stock price is still being hammered.

Re: Secondary shops flooded with unicorn sellers

#138

Post by TheLogothete » Sat, Feb 20, 2016, 10:45 AM UTC

sry_only_anon wrote: post #109

danjayh wrote: post #23

I think that this is just the beginning. In my opinion, we're heading for a tech bust that's going to spread to the rest of the economy, and deflate additional bubbles (housing, for one). The government has been pushing cheap money for the better part of a decade in the name of creating the appearance of a 'recovery', but what they've really done is build a new house of cards. Make no mistake: the 'free' money that's…

In places like SV and Vancouver housing prices are not strongly connected to the economic reach of the median person. China has a middle class as big as the entire US, and a huge number of millionaires in USD, and an unstable, opaque state-run economy, so huge numbers of rich Chinese are buying real estate abroad to protect their wealth and to give their kids a life in the US. I would be happy to see a movement to ke…

China has 300 million people middle class? Do you stop for a moment to listen to yourself? Middle class where? In China, earning $500/month?

Re: Secondary shops flooded with unicorn sellers

#139

Post by acd » Sat, Feb 20, 2016, 11:26 AM UTC

Lets get the mythical horse animals straight first. A mythical horse animal that can fly is called a Pegasi. A unicorn another mythical horse animal doesn't have wings. In startup terms there often mentions of runway and burn rate. Now the magical horses is running down the runway without wings. My guess is that there will be a whole lot of unicorns and very few Pegasi.

Tom Petty - Learnig to fly lyrics "Well I started out down a dirty road Started out all alone And the sun went down as I crossed the hill And the town lit up, the world got still

I'm learning to fly, but I ain't got wings Coming down is the hardest thing

Well, the good ol' days may not return And the rocks might melt and the sea may burn"

Re: Secondary shops flooded with unicorn sellers

#140

Post by KannO » Sat, Feb 20, 2016, 12:06 PM UTC

eru wrote: post #132

nickgrosvenor wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't work like that with housing, it's not a widget, it's fixed (to some degree)

Why? Especially SV has lots of tiny bungalows were you could build skyscrapers.

Mostly local red tape, zoning laws, and NIMBYism