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YC Demo Day Session 2

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Re: YC Demo Day Session 2

#11

Post by jayp »

nichodges wrote: post #4

> Sliced democratizes access to hedge funds. Even though hedge funds have outperformed S&P 500 over the past decade, very few investors have access to them. Hedge Funds on average do not outperform market indices such as S&P 500. I'm curious as to whether this was TechCrunch's take on the problem, or the startup's?

Interesting. If Hedge funds can't event beat a vanilla S&P500 index fund, why would any one want to invest in a hedge fund?

http://longbets.org/362/

Buffet (S&P500) is leading against hedge funds on the aforementioned long bet: http://fortune.com/2014/02/05/buffett-widens-lead-in-1-milli...

Disclaimer: I am on Buffet's side on this long bet. Management fees are the devil. I am all-in for low-fee index funds.

Re: YC Demo Day Session 2

#13

Post by rememberlenny »

jayp wrote: post #11
nichodges wrote: post #4

> Sliced democratizes access to hedge funds. Even though hedge funds have outperformed S&P 500 over the past decade, very few investors have access to them. Hedge Funds on average do not outperform market indices such as S&P 500. I'm curious as to whether this was TechCrunch's take on the problem, or the startup's?

Interesting. If Hedge funds can't event beat a vanilla S&P500 index fund, why would any one want to invest in a hedge fund? http://longbets.org/362/ Buffet (S&P500) is leading against hedge funds on the aforementioned long bet: http://fortune.com/2014/02/05/buffett-widens-lead-in-1-milli... Disclaimer: I am on Buffet's side on this long bet. Management fees are the devil. I am all-in for low-fee index funds.

Hedgefunds CAN beat indexes, but most dont. Most Hedgefunds fail early.

Re: YC Demo Day Session 2

#14

Post by e15ctr0n »

manishsharan wrote: post #10
nichodges wrote: post #4

> Sliced democratizes access to hedge funds. Even though hedge funds have outperformed S&P 500 over the past decade, very few investors have access to them. Hedge Funds on average do not outperform market indices such as S&P 500. I'm curious as to whether this was TechCrunch's take on the problem, or the startup's?

I agree. I recall reading somewhere that warren buffet took a bet with a hedge fund guy a d his premise was also that a hedge fund cannot beat S&P index over a long term . But a sucker is born every minute and I think sliced will do well for itself.

The bet between Warren Buffett and New York based asset manager Protégé Partners is that in the 10 years starting January 1, 2008 Protégé’s five hedge funds of funds will give a higher averaged returns to investors (after all fees) compared to Buffet's choice of the S&P index fund Vanguard Admiral. As of June 2014, Buffet's pick is up by 43.8% while Protégé is up only 12.5%.

http://fortune.com/2014/02/05/buffett-widens-lead-in-1-milli...

Re: YC Demo Day Session 2

#15

Post by tpeng »

nichodges wrote: post #4

> Sliced democratizes access to hedge funds. Even though hedge funds have outperformed S&P 500 over the past decade, very few investors have access to them. Hedge Funds on average do not outperform market indices such as S&P 500. I'm curious as to whether this was TechCrunch's take on the problem, or the startup's?

It's mostly irrelevant. No one is investing in the hedge fund average, they are investing in the hedge funds that they think will do well. It's actually the same if you look at VC funds -- the overall returns of venture funds is poor, but the returns of the top quartile of funds is outstanding. In any case, the S&P 500 is not an appropriate benchmark for the hedge fund industry as a whole, because many hedge funds do not invest (solely) in equities and those that do theoretically have different risk characteristics from the market.

Re: YC Demo Day Session 2

#16

Post by 27182818284 »

seren wrote: post #8

Helion seems unreal. I am not ready up to date with fusion research, but as far as I know there was not even a demo or prototype in lab producing energy for a few seconds (or minutes), and they claim to have a product in 6 years. Can someone tell me what I've missed ?

When I was majoring in physics 10 years ago, a prof with expertise in nuclear physics said the only thing stopping us was funding.

Just of late I came across this graph which says something similar: http://i.imgur.com/JyUZDe2.jpg

Re: YC Demo Day Session 2

#17

Post by dr_ »

I realize it's hard to predict what direction a company will take in the future, but is it YCombinator's policy to incubate companies that from the start seem to be competing against each other? It seems to me that ListRunner and Medisas (http://www.forbes.com/sites/alextaub/2014/04/24/meet-medisas...) do pretty much exactly the same thing.

Re: YC Demo Day Session 2

#18

Post by adwf »

seren wrote: post #8

Helion seems unreal. I am not ready up to date with fusion research, but as far as I know there was not even a demo or prototype in lab producing energy for a few seconds (or minutes), and they claim to have a product in 6 years. Can someone tell me what I've missed ?

You're probably not missing anything. By my (limited) reckoning, even if they can get their design to work in theory, I think they're grossly underestimating the materials requirements for the fusion reactor.

From what I recall, one of the big problems that any reactor project has is that the reaction has a tendency to destroy the reaction chamber. Not just the heat, but the neutron radiation can completely screw up the reaction chamber walls, which then need replacing. It's one of the reasons the ITER project is so large, to make it relatively robust in the face of such destructive power. I also remember reading a while back that the force from the electromagnets in the ITER project is sufficient to launch the entire reaction chamber off the ground, something like 5000 tons...

Having said that, I think it's cool that they're attempting it and I think that fusion projects have been grossly underfunded in the past. The reason why it's always 30 years away is because they're always cutting the funding!

I'd love to be proven wrong on this, but I imagine they'll have unexpected escalating costs surrounding the actual building of a working durable reactor and the company will die before it gets off the ground.

Re: YC Demo Day Session 2

#19

Post by conorgil145 »

Couldn't Square or some other "big" player come in and implement payments via bank account and simply put Kash out of business? I know nothing of the domain, but it seems relatively straight forward to do, no? PayPal already let's me send money to any individual with an email address (and maybe a PayPal account?), so couldn't they just change their fees to 1% flat for businesses tomorrow?

What am I missing? Thoughts?

Re: YC Demo Day Session 2

#20

Post by jayp »

tpeng wrote: post #15
nichodges wrote: post #4

> Sliced democratizes access to hedge funds. Even though hedge funds have outperformed S&P 500 over the past decade, very few investors have access to them. Hedge Funds on average do not outperform market indices such as S&P 500. I'm curious as to whether this was TechCrunch's take on the problem, or the startup's?

It's mostly irrelevant. No one is investing in the hedge fund average, they are investing in the hedge funds that they think will do well. It's actually the same if you look at VC funds -- the overall returns of venture funds is poor, but the returns of the top quartile of funds is outstanding. In any case, the S&P 500 is not an appropriate benchmark for the hedge fund industry as a whole, because many hedge funds do…

Is it really irrelevant?

How do you suppose one tell which hedge fund will do better and which won't beforehand? Past performance? We know that's not a good indicator. If you can tell which hedge funds will do better in the future, you probably can tell which stocks will do better, and then why not just got it yourself without giving someone else 2 and 20?

We agree that S&P500 and hedge funds have different risk factors.

The point is that S&P500 is a lot less riskier and with better returns than an average hedge fund.

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