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Silicon Valley Venture Capitalists Prepare for an I.P.O. Wave

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Re: Silicon Valley Venture Capitalists Prepare for an I.P.O. Wave

#91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Re: "all costs are the same as before" If you mean the same as running a Taxi, you're ignoring the higher prices caused by the artificial scarcity imposed by the medallion system, and ignoring the cost / fee for of the medallion itself. Uber could absolutely return some of that to the user in the form of lower prices than traditional taxis; and keep some for itself, of course.

Uber also has some efficiencies - its ability to pair customers and drivers makes robust taxi markets in a lot of places that wouldn't otherwise have them. (I honestly don't even know if my city has a traditional taxi company, but it definitely has Uber and Lyft)

I'd be surprised if it doesn't. I know someone who lived in West Virginia for a while. Before she got a car, she had to call a taxi to get to and from the grocery store.

(To be fair, this was the eastern panhandle, which has the capital and the tourist attractions.)

Re: Silicon Valley Venture Capitalists Prepare for an I.P.O. Wave

#92
post #62
post #61

something tells me all stars are aligning for a huge correction. real estate prices inflated beyond imaginable while wages bave been stagnant. almost a decade old tech companies not making any money valued in billions and an administration made up of moron wages war on issues that have no relation to the country. something tells me shit will collapse big time in Trump's last term and everything will be blamed on him…

The only problem with the "something tells me" line of reasoning is that it's always being espoused by someone. Literally at any point you can find people who feel the way you do. Good news is that if you keep it up you'll eventually be right for a little while.

good news is that is not something I keep up. Out of my 11 years ib reddit and however long here this is the first time I am saying out loud that there will be a correction in within a next year or two. to the broken clock guy, eat shit.

Re: Silicon Valley Venture Capitalists Prepare for an I.P.O. Wave

#93
post #61

something tells me all stars are aligning for a huge correction. real estate prices inflated beyond imaginable while wages bave been stagnant. almost a decade old tech companies not making any money valued in billions and an administration made up of moron wages war on issues that have no relation to the country. something tells me shit will collapse big time in Trump's last term and everything will be blamed on him…

Do you mean term or year? 2020 will still be in Trump's first term.

Re: Silicon Valley Venture Capitalists Prepare for an I.P.O. Wave

#94
post #74
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This exactly. I work at Google and it astonishes me how surprised people are when I tell them I use autosale, the company program where your stocks are sold immediately as they vest. They always ask "Don't you think Google stock is going to go up?" And I always reply that yes I do think it will go up but 1) that's not the right question to ask, you should ask whether it will go up more/less than anything else you cou…

Note that not all stock compensation is the same. It sounds like you’re talking about restricted stock units, but with (say) ESPP, immediate sales can have less-than-optimal tax implications.

Is there a relative tax advantage to waiting to sell ESPP shares? AFAIK, an ESPP discount counts as earned income in the same year, and LTCG tax advantages would only apply to growth, which would be the case for holding any other stock over that period.

Re: Silicon Valley Venture Capitalists Prepare for an I.P.O. Wave

#95
post #19

Let’s say the company you work for goes public and your stock is suddenly worth $1,000,000 (as an example). A wise investor, you normally put all of your other savings into broad market index funds. Now, do you sell your company’s stock that was given to you and took you four years to vest into, or do you hold on to it and hope the valuation keeps rising? (This is a rhetorical question btw)

It’s not all or nothing. Selling 25% probably makes sense. Selling 100% probably doesn’t. The right balance depends on what % of your total net worth that $1M represents. I also think it highly depends on your answer to “how excited are you about the company’s roadmap for the next few years?” and “do you feel like you / the company have more to do on the topic?”

Yes exactly. For somebody really looking to optimize, research Kelly criterion.

Re: Silicon Valley Venture Capitalists Prepare for an I.P.O. Wave

#96
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, "Uber passengers paid only 41% of the cost of their trips for the fiscal year ended in September 2015." Prices have not changed much since then, so they are a long way from break even. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-uber-profitability/true-p...

I just don't get where the money goes if that's true. If I pay $10 for a ride, $7 goes to the driver, which covers all the cost for the car, gas, his wage etc. $3 goes to Uber. What marginal costs do the have for my ride that are anywhere close to that?

16,000 employees. Salaries, benefits.

Global facilities and infrastructure.

Numerous exploratory business ventures, like Uber Eats.

What you're saying is that you've never built a $10 billion sales, global corporation before. Which is very understandable, few have.

Re: Silicon Valley Venture Capitalists Prepare for an I.P.O. Wave

#97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've thought for quite some time that rather than the broader overall market being allowed to participate in the possibility of crazy gains from technology startups, the rise of the VC financing model has resulted in the lion's share of gains (and losses) going to an elite group of well connected people, and once the easiest money is made, let the market have what's left over in a traditional IPO. As you point out, t…

This is something you can believe only if you think the vast majority of startups are making these returns. The fact is the lions share of risk also goes to VCs. If you gave an average investor the kind of deal flow that big name VCs have access to you’d fry their central nervous system. YC, for all it’s prestige, has only had one startup actually IPO, and only recently. Can an average investor survive this kind of t…

There's only been one IPO, but there's been ~83 exits: http://yclist.com (Only select the "Show Exited" checkbox.)

Re: Silicon Valley Venture Capitalists Prepare for an I.P.O. Wave

#98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Supervised learning requires labels. Unsupervised doesn't. Self driving cars use elements of both. This is why companies like Cruise and Tesla are rushing to get basic self driving cars out there. They need driving data.

Fair enough. I guess I'm in the camp that unsupervised learning is of limited utility.

You can get creative about labels. For instance, with known velocity of the car, predict where an object in view of the camera will be 5 frames in the future... This makes all data recorded by the camera effectively labeled, and is actually a useful thing to have.

Re: Silicon Valley Venture Capitalists Prepare for an I.P.O. Wave

#99
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This exactly. I work at Google and it astonishes me how surprised people are when I tell them I use autosale, the company program where your stocks are sold immediately as they vest. They always ask "Don't you think Google stock is going to go up?" And I always reply that yes I do think it will go up but 1) that's not the right question to ask, you should ask whether it will go up more/less than anything else you cou…

#2 is the dominant point. One of the subtle points on diversification is that it's ok to take less returns if they are uncorrelated to your other investments - you want things that go up when your main investments go down. Even if you're 90% sure that Google will beat the market, you want protection for the 10% case. (And yes - your human capital will take the upside when Google continues to do well)

It's not like you're taking much career risk by working at google, so you don't really need to diversify it away. It's much more important for smaller companies.

Re: Silicon Valley Venture Capitalists Prepare for an I.P.O. Wave

#100
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you had $1MM in cash, how much of it would you use to buy the company's stock?

This exactly. I work at Google and it astonishes me how surprised people are when I tell them I use autosale, the company program where your stocks are sold immediately as they vest. They always ask "Don't you think Google stock is going to go up?" And I always reply that yes I do think it will go up but 1) that's not the right question to ask, you should ask whether it will go up more/less than anything else you cou…

Regarding your second point, I always think of all those employees at Enron, many with stock-heavy compensation plans and even 401k funds heavily focused on Enron stock.

When the jig was up, not only were they out of a job, but all those investments evaporated.

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