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

Facebook establishing a venture arm to invest in startups

axios.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 165 posts

Re: Facebook establishing a venture arm to invest in startups

#141

Post by ta17711771 »

ericflo wrote: post #79
hvaoc wrote: post #44

This will not work. If they are that good with information, they must be building products after products that people will love. Tell me one last known successful launch by Facebook in the last 2 years, outside tweaking their existing products. Only way it could work is if they share their wealth in other areas / people which must be invested in and will not get enough capital if not for them. Ex: Google Venture - So…

> Tell me one last known successful launch by Facebook in the last 2 years Oculus Quest

They...bought Oculus. No?

Re: Facebook establishing a venture arm to invest in startups

#142

Post by ta17711771 »

asdff wrote: post #89
zuhayeer wrote: post #85

No good co will actually take money from the incumbent they're trying to uproot

Mozilla is funded by google.

But Mozilla is no longer trying to uproot Google.

Their job now is to keep Google from getting an antitrust lawsuit/similar sentiment etc.

Re: Facebook establishing a venture arm to invest in startups

#144

Post by TeMPOraL »

gimmeThaBeet wrote: post #39
a13n wrote: post #27

It's pretty interesting that FAANG doing venture capital is basically like legal insider trading. They clearly have data on web traffic, consumer usage, advertising spend, etc. that other VC firms and investors generally don't have access to. They can use this to understand entire markets, see who the incumbents are, estimate revenue/users, see who's up-and-coming, etc. Obviously within some margin of error. I wonder…

That's not really insider trading. Matt Levine pops up here all the time, and one of the really distilled mantras he has: inside trading isn't about fairness , it's about theft . Like the people who track flights to speculate on M&A, or use satellite and aerial imagery to look at parking lots. Gathering information isn't a crime, in fact gathering and acting on that information is explicitly what you want at an aggre…

A tangent, but how do you define "theft of information"? I suppose this circles back to the concept of IP, which I'm increasingly confident should be abolished in entirety.

Re: Facebook establishing a venture arm to invest in startups

#145

Post by kgraves »

cameronbrown wrote: post #66
kgraves wrote: post #23

Facebook is the modern day internet gangster cartel, they are not even trying to hide it any more. This is an obvious trap that is easy to avoid. Sadly, I doubt there is any company that can take them on.

The silly rhetoric here is not warranted, especially without any evidence to back up your points.

Too many sources to cite, would be here all day with papers up to my eyes.

Search: Onavo, Cambridge Analytica, Facebook EU fines, $5BN FTC fine.

And that's just the start.

Re: Facebook establishing a venture arm to invest in startups

#146

Post by TeMPOraL »

ergocoder wrote: post #56
kgraves wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's fair, looking forward to your 'incredible journey' with Facebook. I'm sure they can't wait to see what your startup will come up with. /s

Why the sarcasm? Most of the times, acquirehire by these top companies is probably better than being a regular senior FAANG engineers. Not sure why that is bad. It's probably not the top of the world (e.g. billionaires). But it's definitely a great situation to be in.

If it was just the company and Facebook dating together, nobody would mind - or care.

But the "incredible journey" startups, the ones built primarily to exit, are just bait&switch scams for their users. The users are enticed to enter a relationship with the startup, to build a part of their lives or their work around that startup, only for said startup to suddenly get bought out and the product/service cancelled, destroyed, or altered into a much worse and exploitative form.

I've personally seen this dance enough times, and I now refuse to consider depending on a service if I even suspect the founders are in for an exit, and not long-term business growth. I'll chose F(L)OSS alternative first, a stable company second, and a startup only if I can't afford to make the solution I need myself.

Re: Facebook establishing a venture arm to invest in startups

#147

Post by TeMPOraL »

ta17711771 wrote: post #141
ericflo wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Tell me one last known successful launch by Facebook in the last 2 years Oculus Quest

They...bought Oculus. No?

Long time ago. Quest was developed way after that acquisition.

Re: Facebook establishing a venture arm to invest in startups

#148

Post by TeMPOraL »

stu2b50 wrote: post #24
fheilz wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you take a penny from Softbank?

Softbank is not a software company and probably isn't trying to copy and undercut your business in the future

Nah, they'll just fund your competitor as well, and pit you against each other to see who survives :).

Re: Facebook establishing a venture arm to invest in startups

#149

Post by TeMPOraL »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #17
cryptica wrote: post #6

These kinds of articles about VCs and companies offering to invest big funds used to give me hope, but now that I've participated in bootstrapping a startup, I see these articles as bad news. They're going to fund my competition... Give them easy money and keep funding them until they get that big corporate exit and I'm out of business because my margins are too small and I can't afford bulk discount on Facebook adve…

> I'm out of business because my margins are too small and I can't afford bulk discount This is an economy of scale. It's caused by your competitors' capitalization, and it may be unsustainable since it's with respect to customer-acquisition versus production. If your competitors' unit economics work, they're strategically leveraging scale using capital. Not the other way. (If they don't, go into cockroach mode or se…

I think GP's point is that these competitors can make the extra capital work even better because they're exit seekers - so their business is just a ticking time bomb that needs to be sold off before it collapses. You can squeeze that growth curve quite a bit if sustainability doesn't matter to you. Meanwhile GP is presumably trying to build an actual business - providing value to users in exchange for money.

Re: Facebook establishing a venture arm to invest in startups

#150

Post by raverbashing »

scollet wrote: post #105
raverbashing wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And? You'd probably walk away with at least 6 digits in your bank account. 7 or maybe 8 if you're lucky. This is the kind of money I wouldn't say no except for a very good reason.

Money > ethics in your worldview? This is compounding the issue and creating a toxic incentive.

No, but ethics should be on your business model not so much on who's financing it.
Post reply on HN