Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Vice Ventures is investing in taboo industries that other funds won’t touch

marker.medium.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–145 of 145 posts

Re: Vice Ventures is investing in taboo industries that other funds won’t touch

#141

Post by scarface74 »

BubRoss wrote: post #140
scarface74 wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well seeing that your question doesn’t have anything to do with the thread... My post: “ It’s not about the regulations, it’s about whether the executive branch chooses to enforce them and how much.” And the response to: “ That's really not true, you can't run a giant public company and start breaking laws because you think 'the current executive branch won't care'.” What does it have to do with “changing” the execut…

Ah, so now it's about state governments somehow and for some reason. It seems like every time you bring something hyperbolic and generally untrue that you can't back up, you shift to something else.

Your thesis was that no large company would operate illegally because the law wasn’t enforced by the executive branch. Then you went off on a tangent about a change in the executive branch.

Is Koch Industries not large enough?

Re: Vice Ventures is investing in taboo industries that other funds won’t touch

#142

Post by colejohnson66 »

homonculus1 wrote: post #132
sdinsn wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless you use a weapon for self defense.

Self-defense doesn't exist according to HN. The SFPD should be good enough for anybody, which means all private guns are just murder waiting to happen.

I think you’ll find that the political diversity here is quite wide. There’s people here against guns and people here who believe people have a right to own them.

Re: Vice Ventures is investing in taboo industries that other funds won’t touch

#143

Post by perl4ever »

duskwuff wrote: post #98
mensetmanusman wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People say they get addicted to porn, what does science have to do with what they say?

Science says that there is a distinction between the colloquial definition of "addicted" and the technical definition of a physiological / psychological addiction. Many people will also say that a delicious food, an entertaining game, or an enjoyable TV show is "addictive", but these do not actually constitute addictions either.

I don't know how professionals define it, but it seems to me logical to define an addiction as something which people cannot stop even when it leads to financial, health, or other difficulty that affects normal functioning and/or relationships. That is, the short-term need for a fix overrides universal parts of living a healthy life.

This is not precise, but it seems like an appropriate metric. It's basically the same as defining mental illness in general vs. harmless eccentricity.

Re: Vice Ventures is investing in taboo industries that other funds won’t touch

#144

Post by kleer001 »

jungy wrote: post #122
kleer001 wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference is the chance involved. Chess involves no chance. Scrabble involves the chance of the tiles you get, there's still a lot of skill involved. E-sports is more like scrabble than chess.

This is just not true. What do you base this on? Top e-sports games such as Dota 2, CS:GO and StarCraft 2 are highly skill based games where strategy and teamwork (in the first two games) is all that matters. There are, in Dota 2, a few chance based characters you can play, but in the grand scheme of things it doesn't make "chess to scrabble". In my opinion you seem ill informed and biased.

In my opinion you sound like you're feeling attacked, Mr. Anonymous Made-an-account-to-make-this-comment.

We're arguing about degree here, and it's pointless. You say it's a low degree of chance. I say it's a low degree of chance.

Just like professional body based in-person sports, chance is an integral component to e-sports. Football, soccer, tennis are based partially on chance. That's how multiple houses agree, more or less, on the chance spread.

Re: Vice Ventures is investing in taboo industries that other funds won’t touch

#145

Post by laughinghan »

siruncledrew wrote: post #108

I think the biggest win here is the marketing for Vice after putting together this $25M fund. This is totally on-brand for them, regardless of how business-viable these investments are. Plus, it’s not Vice’s own money they are playing with (which is good for them given their profitability struggles as a parent company). My inclination is that VCs don’t particularly not-invest in successful “vice-driven companies” due…

> VCs will absolutely be dragged into the mix and publicly shamed for contributing to the problem

In every example you gave, the investors whose names was "dragged" were already independently controversial.

Juul has plenty of investors who didn't famously exacerbate and suppress public awareness of what is still the leading cause of preventable death in the US [1]. WeWork and Uber have plenty of investors who didn't famously murder and dismember any journalists.

This undermines your claim that such "media shitstorms" can "trash [a] firm’s legacy and reputation". Cigarette companies and Saudi money already had trash reputations independent of Juul, WeWork, and Uber.

[1] According to the CDC: https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/fact_sheets/fast...

Post reply on HN