131–140 of 252 posts
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May I introduce https://chirper.ai
Please submit it again, as its own post, using "Show HN" -- this deserves more eyeballs! Personally, I found it striking how similar this looks to the other doomscrolling sites (sure, it's only superficial, but if you don't "dig" you might not catch that it's all simulated).
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They are indeed lent out, but mostly in very safe, boring investments, that don't really generate economic activity (mortgages). This is by design, as we generally don't want banks going pear-shaped, and taking people's savings with them! If your money is used to generate meaningful economic activity, that means you're investing it into something like stocks (Which anyone can do by opening a Schwab, or a Vanguard, or…
"In the good times" when dollar was backed by gold, bankers would borrow at 3%, lend at 6% and go to a golf course at 3 o'clock. The economy is working incorrectly - due to central banks. Being punished for saving is just insane.
The economy is a prisoner's dilemma. If everyone saved, we'd all be worse off.
As such, it makes sense to punish defectors.
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I've always had this background thought that it would be a fun job to do "due diligence" on behalf of VCs. I remember being on the receiving end of some of that work, and I wasn't all that impressed. Do today's VCs take technical due diligence seriously? If not, why not?
VCs don't invest their own money. VCs are paid a percentage of the money they invest in startups. As a result VCs only care about the quality of the investment they make insofar it helps them raise more money in the future. Because more money = more fees. VCs care about technology sometimes, but not always. If a startup doesn't grow because their tech is bad that's something VCs care a lot about. If a startup grows f…
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I have brought this up in another comment, but my experience in the VC world is that it operates too heavily based on 4 types of "trust": 1) Institutional trust (Stanford, Harvard, MIT, "ex-FAANG", "ex-McKinsey", etc.), 2) Social trust (someone you know that has already established one of the three other kinds of trust), 3) Serial trust ("3-exits", "former CEO/CTO/VP of..."), and 4) Transitive trust ("Sequoia investe…
Non-native English speaker here. What does "serial" mean in this context? Is it referring to a linear record of achievements/prior employment?
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I've always had this background thought that it would be a fun job to do "due diligence" on behalf of VCs. I remember being on the receiving end of some of that work, and I wasn't all that impressed. Do today's VCs take technical due diligence seriously? If not, why not?
VCs don't invest their own money. VCs are paid a percentage of the money they invest in startups. As a result VCs only care about the quality of the investment they make insofar it helps them raise more money in the future. Because more money = more fees. VCs care about technology sometimes, but not always. If a startup doesn't grow because their tech is bad that's something VCs care a lot about. If a startup grows f…
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Hey, Reddit was all fake users at the start, making people think it was active and persuading them to join.
YouTube famously spent many of their first years turning a blind eye to blatant copyright infringement. Shady “growth hacking” is more the norm than not for many of these early stage social companies that have chicken/egg Metcalfe’s Law issues for user adoption.
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Yep, cue the "free market" folks celebrating poorly-informed transactions between VCs dumping these companies on construction workers investing to try to fight inflation enough to send their kids to college.
> poorly-informed transactions between VCs dumping these companies on construction workers Who is doing this?
Reddit famously started with a lot of fake users. I think the founders mentioned it in an interview. Even the Swedish guy from the show Succession was inflating his numbers. And those attributed clicks from Facebook (especially fb) and Google, better not to look too close.
Reddit is a little different as their intention was to populate the platform with content in the early days [1], not to mislead investors with fake metrics. Mind you that Huffman and Ohanian did this manually, while founders today can use LLMs to fill their platforms with bots that can interact "naturally" with users. I wonder how many are already doing it. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmeDzx4SUME
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They are indeed lent out, but mostly in very safe, boring investments, that don't really generate economic activity (mortgages). This is by design, as we generally don't want banks going pear-shaped, and taking people's savings with them! If your money is used to generate meaningful economic activity, that means you're investing it into something like stocks (Which anyone can do by opening a Schwab, or a Vanguard, or…
"In the good times" when dollar was backed by gold, bankers would borrow at 3%, lend at 6% and go to a golf course at 3 o'clock. The economy is working incorrectly - due to central banks. Being punished for saving is just insane.
That’s of course without considering any of the pre and during depression era panics, where there was a quasi gold standard.
Savings can either be punished by inflation or risk. That’s an immutable financial fact. The only time you aren’t being punished for savings is if you exist in an economy where money can’t be put to productive use and is thus deflationary. Sometimes that’s good for savers but generally it means you are experiencing bad stagnation more broadly in the economy.
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YouTube famously spent many of their first years turning a blind eye to blatant copyright infringement. Shady “growth hacking” is more the norm than not for many of these early stage social companies that have chicken/egg Metcalfe’s Law issues for user adoption.
YouTube had to have an informal deal worked something out with the studios. Circa 2004, the internet was awash in streaming video sites with copyrighted Family Guy and Futurama clips, which were often taken down. Then boom, one day those sites themselves go offline, and that content all moves to Youtube, where it stays up.