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Hanging up my spurs

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Re: Hanging up my spurs

#141

Post by chickenfries »

dmix wrote: post #98
dmitri1981 wrote: post #20

Chris Sacca's background story is little known and he talks about it at length with Jason Calacanis. The part about him losing millions while still at university is as shocking as his recovery from the setback is amazing. Check out https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6VOQnK7O2To

[sploiler] For those who want a TLDR of this story, here it is from his Wikipedia: https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Chris_Sacca > During law school, Sacca used his student loans to start a company which was unsuccessful and used what was left to start trading on the stock market. By leveraging trades for significant amounts (discovering a flaw in the software of online trading brokers)[15] he managed to turn 10–20 thousan…

What was the flaw? Also, isn't starting a company with your student loans illegal?

> He says he managed to graduate without attending class. In order to obtain class notes, he threw an annual keg party where entry required classmates to dump their notes in a bin.

I sure wouldn't want that guy as my lawyer.

Re: Hanging up my spurs

#142

Post by aswanson »

chickenfries wrote: post #141
dmix wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[sploiler] For those who want a TLDR of this story, here it is from his Wikipedia: https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Chris_Sacca > During law school, Sacca used his student loans to start a company which was unsuccessful and used what was left to start trading on the stock market. By leveraging trades for significant amounts (discovering a flaw in the software of online trading brokers)[15] he managed to turn 10–20 thousan…

What was the flaw? Also, isn't starting a company with your student loans illegal? > He says he managed to graduate without attending class. In order to obtain class notes, he threw an annual keg party where entry required classmates to dump their notes in a bin. I sure wouldn't want that guy as my lawyer.

The flaw was that the early online trading systems didn't include provisions for reg-T, which stopped leverage at I think 50 percent of your balance. So, you could borrow hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of stock with a thousand dollar account balance. He goes into detail on it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iqUG2_cmZ6I

Re: Hanging up my spurs

#143

Post by anthuswilliams »

hsod wrote: post #123
exclusiv wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's very disturbing but it's a leftist thing, not a liberal thing. Based on what he writes, he's a leftist. How productive can any conversation be when you have such a backwards and unfair starting point that the other side is evil? Leftists also assume minorities can't do certain things and that only they can save them because they are the enlightened ones. Leftists are far removed from being progressive and tolera…

The problem with your worldview is it leaves you totally unprepared for the scenario when the other side genuinely elects an evil or destructive person. It presumes there's always a rough moral equality between the two sides. We have historical examples of evil and destructive regimes being legitimately elected. It's not impossible. Sacca claims we are observing another example, right now, in America.

I don't think it presumes there is moral equality at all. Rather, it's perfectly possible for an evil and destructive regime to be elected by misinformed or desperate people, and you might be wrong about voters' motives when you assume that they voted the way they did out of pure hatred and malice.

Re: Hanging up my spurs

#144

Post by rhizome »

ghaff wrote: post #130
rhizome wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Amazon Echo having a 60-item case statement is not how "AI" is typically promoted.

You may have misunderstood my point. I'm saying that being able to interact with a digital assistant (I only used Echo as an example) the way I would with a human admin and have it take appropriate actions is many years away. It would be an interesting application for many of us, but it's not close.

I agree that it is many years away.

Re: Hanging up my spurs

#145

Post by aswanson »

j_s wrote: post #111
e40 wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not going to watch a nearly 3 hour video to find that part. Please tell me the h/m index into the foreshadowing. Thanks.

https://youtu.be/iqUG2_cmZ6I?t=1h52m39s feels close

Thanks, but I was thinking more along: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iqUG2_cmZ6I&feature=youtu.be...

Re: Hanging up my spurs

#146

Post by aswanson »

e40 wrote: post #103
aswanson wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think his story is funnier on this one, and he drops some foreshadowing hints here as to why Trump won, even before Obama's second electoral win: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iqUG2_cmZ6I

I'm not going to watch a nearly 3 hour video to find that part. Please tell me the h/m index into the foreshadowing. Thanks.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iqUG2_cmZ6I&feature=youtu.be...

Re: Hanging up my spurs

#147

Post by Clownshoesms »

fao_ wrote: post #135
Judgmentality wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometimes I think people in the Valley don't realize they live in a microcosm. I had never heard of Chris Sacca before Shark Tank, and I've raised venture capital in the Bay Area before.

I had never heard of Shark Tank, or any of the people mentioned so far in this thread until I stumbled upon a mispost somewhere on Hacker News. I don't get why people would watch that. The investors came off as idiots.

Hadn't heard of it either. Sounds like a very greedy guy that just has to blog about his trials and tribulations, and explain just how his greed is actually "drive" and "working hard". This VC kowtowing is sickening.

Re: Hanging up my spurs

#148

Post by tommynicholas »

socrates1998 wrote: post #122
tommynicholas wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chris won the Twitter lottery.... and the Uber lottery.... and the Instagram lottery..... and a bunch of other lotteries. Had arguably the best run of seed investing in history.

Is there proof he got in early on all these and made money? I think it's been pretty established he got in super early on Twitter and made a ton of money, but I don't know about the Uber or Instagram. I sound like a hater, but just because you "invested in" those companies doesn't mean you made money or were a smart investor.

1. He only invests early, so yes. 2. His fund for those investments went 213x

http://fortune.com/2015/01/08/exclusive-is-this-the-best-per...

Possibly the best VC fund of all time.

Re: Hanging up my spurs

#150

Post by nandemo »

Domenic_S wrote: post #106
JabavuAdams wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a personal post, why shouldn't he have an opinion? Also, how do you get to "devil incarnate"? The most negative thing he said was that the current administration are oppressive zealots. Note that he didn't specifically call out Republicans. The current administration has flouted norms, both Democratic and Republican.

"I think the institutions, principles, norms, and traditions that make the United States of America genuinely exceptional are at serious risk. It has been hard to think about anything else." "These oppressive zealots in the White House" "fighting a despotic regime" Of course he can have an opinion, and it seems like everyone's got one. It's less clear why the reader should care. And statements like this: "My career w…

> The hyperbole just smacks of virtue signaling, which some people enjoy and others don't.

Why is everything that democrats/liberal say deemed "virtue signaling" now? Do liberals have any genuine principles at all? Are some liberals signaling these virtues to other liberals who genuinely have principles, or is "virtue signaling all the way down"?

(BTW, I'm not American and don't identify neither as liberal or conservative)

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