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Hanging up my spurs

lowercasecapital.com

11–20 of 195 posts

Re: Hanging up my spurs

#11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Judging by his website, because of his extraordinary ability to vet tech opportunities. Check out the list on his Posse page - it's staggering.

Perhaps I'm missing something, but is this the list you're referring to? http://markcubancompanies.com/index.html What is staggering about that list? It looks pretty much like any list of a VC that has survived. One or two big but not tremendous plays like Dropbox and a lot of companies I haven't heard of before.

Lol, Sacca has invested in some really "tremendous plays"

Re: Hanging up my spurs

#12
post #7

This looks like a really easy marker that we've topped out on unicorn/big secondary market. When the smart big players start to take their chips off the table you can be sure this thing has peaked.

Or it could have nothing to do with that, and be exactly what he says - he achieved what he set out to do and realizes that he now wants to do something else with his life, and has the time and resources to do so.

Many times it's both: personal circumstances will make someone want to retire, but if things look good in the markets, they'll hold on for a year or two, and if things start looking tapped out that'll give them permission to step back. He's 2 years late, after all.

Re: Hanging up my spurs

#13

This looks like a really easy marker that we've topped out on unicorn/big secondary market. When the smart big players start to take their chips off the table you can be sure this thing has peaked.

Nah. We were talking to lowercase three years ago and Mazzeo was already running the day to day for Sacca to spend more time with his family. This is a personal thing and has been a long time coming.

Re: Hanging up my spurs

#15

This looks like a really easy marker that we've topped out on unicorn/big secondary market. When the smart big players start to take their chips off the table you can be sure this thing has peaked.

People just have different interests. Why do you think only 1 person would leave if it was topped out as you say? All the other ones just want to waste money?

Re: Hanging up my spurs

#16
post #7

This looks like a really easy marker that we've topped out on unicorn/big secondary market. When the smart big players start to take their chips off the table you can be sure this thing has peaked.

Or it could have nothing to do with that, and be exactly what he says - he achieved what he set out to do and realizes that he now wants to do something else with his life, and has the time and resources to do so.

After having founded a number of startup, I know how it is to be in an all consuming thing. I would imagine as a conscience VC you would have to feel all in on many projects.

Re: Hanging up my spurs

#17

Chris Sacca is one of the few VCs that people outside of the SV bubble and even the tech world know and associate with the valley. He, along with Mark Cuban & potentially a few others will likely be part of the few of this era remembered many decades from now when history gets consolidated into a few figures, much like Gordon Moore of Intel & William Shockley of the Mountain View of the 1950's.

I really don't think Mark Cuban will be on that list.

Re: Hanging up my spurs

#18
He's in the extremely privileged position to fund ten thousand people's potentially world-changing dreams. Instead, he's going to squander it podcasting in his pajamas.

We need someone with the ambition Paul Graham had when he launched Y Combinator.

Silicon Valley is still not a meritocracy. There are still tens of thousands of ambitious people not receiving funding. There's still no way for the early users of massive products to buy equity and lift themselves from the lower class.

There is no greater lever in the world than technology, no better way to create technology than startups, and no more sure way to create great startups than by funding them.

Re: Hanging up my spurs

#19
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Judging by his website, because of his extraordinary ability to vet tech opportunities. Check out the list on his Posse page - it's staggering.

I'd like to see a list of his investments that also includes the ones that failed, as well as the amount on each investment. Are there places that track this info among VCs?

Yes, you can buy this from Cambridge Associates, and a few other "consultants." But it costs more than you would be willing to pay out of mere curiosity.

Generally speaking, the institutional limited partners (LPs; pension funds, endowments, family offices, etc.) that invest in venture and private equity incur pretty significant costs to get third-party information about actual performance by managers (i.e. VCs). From largest to smallest, LPs might generally: subscribe to Cambridge's data and use it in-house with full time staff, or hire a consultant (like Cambridge) to assess and help select their managers, or pay a fund-of-funds a fee (on the order of 1%) to do likewise.

The point of all that is: figuring out who is actually making money in VC, and guessing who is likely to continue doing so, is very non-trivial. It can't be done with publicly available, Crunchbase / Angel.co type data, much less a VC's own statements or portfolio listing page.

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