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VC isn't VC anymore

anildash.com

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Re: VC isn't VC anymore

#81

Post by sznio »

dv_dt wrote: post #73
rconti wrote: post #61

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.

Of course it can fail, just like the AI circular investment moves can fail just like the Soviet Union failed. Too much decisive power in too few hands, disconnected from reality, disconnected from competition, disconnected from outside community criticism. It fails open loop. A lot of money can temporarily buffer the failure, but already we see world wide inflation and interest rate increases from the open loop decis…

or it can not fail, like North Korea

Re: VC isn't VC anymore

#82

Post by SoftTalker »

xyst wrote: post #44

VC, private equity, angel investor, vulture capitalist. All the same to me. All of these entities have ruined previous workplaces in one way or another. Effectively stealing years of my life that I put my labor into. These rich cunts are the reason everything is shittier and the term "enshittification" exists in our modern vernacular

> Effectively stealing years of my life

You got a paycheck, no?

Re: VC isn't VC anymore

#83

Post by toomuchtodo »

zipy124 wrote: post #79
toomuchtodo wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Griffin and citadel less bailed him out, and more circled like sharks and made out with a good deal TBF.

That's a fair point. I suppose the difference is if a rando is about to get blown out of the water, no one is coming to save them. If someone connected is going to get blown out of the water, calls are going to be made, people are going to meet, and it's going to "be taken care of" even if it's a good deal for whomever is Winston 'The Wolf' Wolf in the situation. Caveat being that sometimes, even if well connected, you're still toast (Archegos Capital Management and Bill Hwang).

Re: VC isn't VC anymore

#84

Post by ericmcer »

sghiassy wrote: post #16
exceptione wrote: post #15

> Since the Cancer Capital firms have become so powerful, the overall balance of power between founders and VCs has flipped; instead of founders having a company that VCs would try to fund, now VCs publish extremist political manifestos, and “founders” are just the people who are selected to carry out parts of those plans > The rest of the world doesn’t know: New founders and workers entering the tech industry are un…

It’s the second gilded age Hopefully this one will pass, just as the first did

My paranoid brain thinks the new "Every baby gets a $1000 investment account" is a lame effort on their part to keep it going. For an extremely low price tag they can give every child & parent skin in the game. For someone struggling seeing their kids account go up a $100 might compel them to support the bloated financial/banking industry now that they get a few drops from it.

Re: VC isn't VC anymore

#85

Post by sershe »

palata wrote: post #4
cratermoon wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Startups define different classes of stock. The class A shareholders are the founders and investors. Everyone else gets class B shares. The A class shares don't get diluted, and they are inherently worth more anyway.

So fundamentally, "everyone else" is scammed. Unless the class A scammers get so, so rich that everyone else gets rich as well. In which case it's still a scam, but the "everyone else" are happy anyway.

Why is that a scam? Nobody ever promises you any specific valuation or fraction of the company. When I joined a company relatively late but well before IPO, some funny number of shares at 12 cents or whatever each did not even enter my calculation any more than "oh and they also give me a free lottery ticket". In my case depending on when one sold after IPO they would have been in the range centered around about compensating for the salary differential I think, but nobody promises you they'd ever be worth more than Monopoly money

Re: VC isn't VC anymore

#86

Post by anildash »

bix6 wrote: post #25

I’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…

I think “regular” VCs are one of the cohorts of people I feel worst for! I have a lot of friends who got into the business wanting to help entrepreneurs, and now they’re stuck on a cap table with folks who they’d never want to do business with. It’s not any different than the founders or employees who don’t want to be saddled with these guys, either.

The hard part is figuring out how to change these structures so that people can actually extract themselves and still build stuff that isn’t toxic and destructive.

Re: VC isn't VC anymore

#87

Post by cyberax »

cratermoon wrote: post #3
palata wrote: post #2

Let's keep praying for fewer and fewer regulations, it's going great! I didn't know that VCs were ever "not cancer", I've always known them like that. Also my experience with startups is that it is a big scam for employees, but I understand it's not always the case (maybe it depends on where in the world?). I have been an early employee in multiple startups that got the founders rich, and what I got from the stocks d…

Startups define different classes of stock. The class A shareholders are the founders and investors. Everyone else gets class B shares. The A class shares don't get diluted, and they are inherently worth more anyway.

Anti-dilution shares were extremely uncommon.

Re: VC isn't VC anymore

#88

Post by fxd »

psadauskas wrote: post #57
sghiassy wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s the second gilded age Hopefully this one will pass, just as the first did

The first one passed with a lot of regular people losing their homes, their jobs, and even their lives. I wish just for once we could have the wealthy elites get their comeuppance without it also screwing over everyone else.

One way to have the biggest house on the block is make sure nobody else can build.

Why spend the money to build the bigger house when you don’t really enjoy it anyway - when your only motivation is that nobody else’s house is as big.

Re: VC isn't VC anymore

#89

Post by euio757 »

> Those firms also stop legally even being venture capital firms

We need an equivalent of the "Fiduciary" word for financial advisors ... but applied to VCs.

"Are you an Artisanal, Free-Range, Fair-Trade™ VC?"

Re: VC isn't VC anymore

#90

Post by anildash »

alexashka wrote: post #47

VC was good when a guy with no technical skills raised 10s of millions of dollars. That was when VC was good, right? This guy has been grifting his entire career but it's those other people who are the problem, guys! He's not wrong about VC but he's another Chamath - a guy who grifts a thing to death, moves on to the next grift and goes 'look, that grift I'm no longer doing - it's bad, very bad!'

You should ask Chamath how he feels about empowering workers through unions.
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