I was thinking about this the other day in regard to Flock. There's simply no way this company will fail, despite the public outcry, because the rich people in charge will not _let_ it fail.
VC isn't VC anymore
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Re: VC isn't VC anymore
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
Y'all need ethics is what ya need.
I agree. Ethics is at the forefront of everything I do both personally and professionally. I used to serve on an ethics in business council. All the investments we make are grounded in genuinely improving the world. It’s unfortunate that so much money flows to certain VC firms when people like me exist since I reckon I’m much more aligned with what the general population wants.
> It’s unfortunate that so much money flows to certain VC firms when people like me exist since I reckon I’m much more aligned with what the general population wants.
You sound like a pretty good dude
The study of Ethics is such a double edged sword. On one hand you have people who study ethics to think about how to treat people well, on the other hand you have people who study ethics in order to treat people as poorly as possible while still being "ethical"
I don't have a ton of firsthand exposure to the decision making process of huge corporations, but I imagine they mostly listen to the second group of ethicists
Re: VC isn't VC anymore
#63VC is basically just plowing capital into people that went to prestigious schools or maybe were at a top company. They collect fees and every once in a while a company hits. Any analysis on the asset class is moot. Most of the VC media is aimed at hiding the fact that its a lottery machine for a pre selected group
I think the letter V should be removed from VC to better reflect your point that these are barely ventures - they're more like a rigged casino spin for those that don't have the talent to do the building themselves.
That's what the letter V was historically understood to mean. As the article says, venture capital used to be a small segment of the capital markets for the uncommon set of companies who can't prove their idea is any good until they get more capital than their friends and family have to offer. The idea that venture funding is supposed to be anything more than a rigged casino spin is upstream of quite a lot of the problems people have with modern VC.
Re: VC isn't VC anymore
#64I've been in an interesting spot the last few months. I've pitched probably two dozen or so VCs and, and while almost every case showed interest, it was quickly followed by "rules" and "desires" that were antithetical to the product. The product I am building is a decentralized trust system. The word "trust" is literally in the name. It requires very specific decisions and a very specific organizational and legal str…
Yeah, you need to look away from private equity investment. Mutuals, co-ops, LLPs, there's lots of other models, but VC and PE money is not where you want to be.
Re: VC isn't VC anymore
#65> But a cancer grows from a cell that a body needs in small, healthy amounts, and that turns deadly when it grows without limit until it harms, or even kills, its host I thought a cancer grew from a defective cell that is able to divide and grow to over take the healthy ones.
I would not focus on individual cells but the ability to grow super fast, which itself is not a defect since it's important during development, but the checks on this ability can be removed by later mutations/metabolic issues
Re: VC isn't VC anymore
#66VC is basically just plowing capital into people that went to prestigious schools or maybe were at a top company. They collect fees and every once in a while a company hits. Any analysis on the asset class is moot. Most of the VC media is aimed at hiding the fact that its a lottery machine for a pre selected group
I don't think they are that squeamish about hiding it. VC's talk all the time about investing in people and understanding that their ideas May shift over time. Tyler Cowen is a big proponent of pre-selecting talented people and not even requiring an idea. I think this is the model of Emergent Ventures (EV), launched in 2018, and is getting replicated in many places. I think it is regarded as highly successful
"Looking for motivated people willing to do anything for money"
Re: VC isn't VC anymore
#67I’m a VC and agree with much of this. The mega firms have totally warped VC and the desire for massive cash appreciation has led to a host of bad characters getting involved. I still love working with early stage companies but it is hard to cut your own lane when these mega groups control so many aspects of the stack and have such outsized capital and political influence. There are so many issues destroying early sta…
Y'all need ethics is what ya need.
Ethics are always forced. In a society that does not force ethics in one way or another they will cease to exist.
Re: VC isn't VC anymore
#68I was thinking about this the other day in regard to Flock. There's simply no way this company will fail, despite the public outcry, because the rich people in charge will not _let_ it fail.
Strong agree, spot on. There will always be wealthy folks behind the scenes who will arrange for the capital theatrics to land the way they want (Loopt was a failure and Sam Altman still ended up running YC because of vibes, Leopold Aschenbrenner blew up Situational Awareness and wealthy friends [Griffin and Citadel] bailed him out, for example). The best you can do is political recourse (note the wide social efforts to vote out folks who support data centers, and to have Flock contracts cancelled) and decouple from needing anything from any company who is controlled by these folks through cap tables, network, etc.
The game is rigged, operate accordingly. You are managing risk and threat exposure against threat actors who want to obtain and maintain control, influence, and power.
Re: VC isn't VC anymore
#69Wow, TIL a16z hired the NYC subway guy as a partner purely as a political stunt. This on top of the $115M in the midterms, them no longer legally being a VC firm, and recent discussion on dark patterns in their portfolio [1]. I'm inclined to agree with the thesis of the article especially with regards to this firm. Looking forward to the other articles in the series.
Re: VC isn't VC anymore
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
To be fair to yourself, a16z could have changed over that time, and the marketing was honest early on.
I suspect this is what it is, the money got to everyone's head not too long ago we were amazed at Apple hitting $1 trillion mkt cap and elon reaching $100 bil now we're waiting for the first trillionaires to show up
Elon Musk was already minted the worlds first trillionaire back in June wasn't he?
Pretty insane from 100 billion in 2020 to 1 trillion in 2026.
Not a sign of a supremely broken system at all