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Sam Altman's Bubble Talk Bet Is 1 Year Old

blog.samaltman.com

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Re: Sam Altman's Bubble Talk Bet Is 1 Year Old

#4

Post by projectramo »

Here are his three bets reproduced for comments:

1) The top 6 US companies at http://fortune.com/2015/01/22/the-age-of-unicorns/ (Uber, Palantir, Airbnb, Dropbox, Pinterest, and SpaceX) are currently worth just over $100B. I am leaving out Snapchat because I couldn’t get verification of its valuation. Proposition 1: On January 1st, 2020, these companies will be worth at least $200B in aggregate.

Seems he is on track for that one.

2) Stripe, Zenefits, Instacart, Mixpanel, Teespring, Optimizely, Coinbase, Docker, and Weebly are a selection of mid-stage YC companies currently worth less than $9B in aggregate. Proposition 2: On January 1st, 2020, they will be worth at least $27B in aggregate.

Hmm... not as confident but I would not bet against it.

3) Proposition 3: The current YC Winter 2015 batch—currently worth something that rounds down to $0—will be worth at least $3B on Jan 1st, 2020.

http://techcrunch.com/2015/03/23/here-are-the-companies-that...

http://techcrunch.com/2015/03/24/y-combinator-demos/

Might be on track as well, though I am even less confident.

If I were a betting man, I would say he is more right than wrong, and on track for all three.

I think this underscores how long 5 years is in internet time.

Re: Sam Altman's Bubble Talk Bet Is 1 Year Old

#7

Post by neom »

He'll likely be right on all 3 but only because 1 company in each will disproportionately skew. His bet is overly broad.

Palantir and SpaceX are very promising companies, it's hard to say if their true value will be realized by 2020.

Stripe alone is worth $10-15B if you ask me.

Where he might stumble is the 3rd, however finding $3B of worth in what must be 30+ companies shouldn't be hard, depends how badly the global economy slows in the next 4 years.

I'm not sure this really does much to disprove the insular and bubbly nature of technology investment, however.

Re: Sam Altman's Bubble Talk Bet Is 1 Year Old

#8

Post by stale2002 »

blowski wrote: post #5

Did anyone take the bet? --- EDIT: OK, found out that "Boston-based venture capitalist Michael de la Maza" took him up on it. http://money.cnn.com/2015/03/30/technology/sam-altman-tech-s...

Lame. It was just someone who wanted to work with Sam. Not someone who actually believed we are in a bubble, and was "Putting his money where his mouth was"

Re: Sam Altman's Bubble Talk Bet Is 1 Year Old

#9

Post by jaz46 »

neom wrote: post #7

He'll likely be right on all 3 but only because 1 company in each will disproportionately skew. His bet is overly broad. Palantir and SpaceX are very promising companies, it's hard to say if their true value will be realized by 2020. Stripe alone is worth $10-15B if you ask me. Where he might stumble is the 3rd, however finding $3B of worth in what must be 30+ companies shouldn't be hard, depends how badly the global…

Winter 15 batch was 100+ companies.

Re: Sam Altman's Bubble Talk Bet Is 1 Year Old

#10

Post by trsohmers »

projectramo wrote: post #4

Here are his three bets reproduced for comments: 1) The top 6 US companies at http://fortune.com/2015/01/22/the-age-of-unicorns/ (Uber, Palantir, Airbnb, Dropbox, Pinterest, and SpaceX) are currently worth just over $100B. I am leaving out Snapchat because I couldn’t get verification of its valuation. Proposition 1: On January 1st, 2020, these companies will be worth at least $200B in aggregate. Seems he is on track…

Cruise (YC W14) was recently acquired by GM for $1B, so if he picked one earlier class the $3B bet would be attainable in my mind. Not to slight any W15 companies, I just haven't seen much.
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