Hanging up my spurs • Hacker News Board

Re: Hanging up my spurs

#191

Post by wand3r » Thu, Apr 27, 2017, 6:10 PM UTC

tommynicholas wrote: post #160

wand3r wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's public he owns Uber and owned it early. I think it's early to say if that was a "win"; I reckon he got in at a good val but Uber ain't public and w/ a braindrain, 2 lawsuits, likely death of their AI program, ceding China to Didi and public backlash idk if it's got legs. Chris made a lot of money and he did a lot of interesting things. He's interesting and a lot was luck and a lot was skill. That said, T…

You can click on any of the several links in this thread to see that you forgot more than Instagram. I don't have any affection for Sacca, don't know him, don't care about him, etc. But he's factually been an incredible investor and it's just weird to see concerted effort to dispute that for no reason. He could be all sorts of negative things but he was a hell of a seed investor and that's in the books and he's got t…

I have seen almost every interview he's done. Admire a lot about him. Not discrediting him at all, just saying Uber might be too close to call.

The one thing I would say is that he is pretty flashy and a bit of a braggard which many are; but going on SharkTank was a bit much. Guy has been super successful objectively my point was just that (to me, subjectively) it sort of feels like he's an entertainer more than an investor and values the fame and spotlight more than tech. Obviously his motivation doesn't matter vs. The track record but if I am critical of him it's just that it feels off vs. people like Steve Jurvetson or Horowitz who value innovation, technology and are happy to promote that above themselves

Re: Hanging up my spurs

#192

Post by snarf » Thu, Apr 27, 2017, 8:08 PM UTC

wand3r wrote: post #191

tommynicholas wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can click on any of the several links in this thread to see that you forgot more than Instagram. I don't have any affection for Sacca, don't know him, don't care about him, etc. But he's factually been an incredible investor and it's just weird to see concerted effort to dispute that for no reason. He could be all sorts of negative things but he was a hell of a seed investor and that's in the books and he's got t…

I have seen almost every interview he's done. Admire a lot about him. Not discrediting him at all, just saying Uber might be too close to call. The one thing I would say is that he is pretty flashy and a bit of a braggard which many are; but going on SharkTank was a bit much. Guy has been super successful objectively my point was just that (to me, subjectively) it sort of feels like he's an entertainer more than an i…

He is naturally a bit puffed up and that was a common critique of him from back in the Google days. I think this personality type is somewhat common among successful seed investors where being a "tech personality" helps with getting deal flow. Name brand institutional investors like Jurvetson and Horowitz don't need to rely on such tricks for deal flow.

Re: Hanging up my spurs

#193

Post by dwaltrip » Thu, Apr 27, 2017, 11:06 PM UTC

jtraffic wrote: post #54

It's interesting to think about this decision in the context of Nassim Taleb's writing. If you have a large sample of investors, some of them would be good just by chance. It's possible that Chris Sacca is not good just by chance, but we can't really know, and that is an excellent feature of walking away at this point. Most people will just tell themselves that Sacca "beat the game" and left. It could easily be that…

Of course chance plays a huge role, but entropically speaking, the idea that all investors have equal skill seems a bit absurd.

Now, whether "investing skill" is something that can be meaningfully distilled and taught to others is a whole different question. I think the answer is closer to "no" than "yes". The industry-wide distribution of the long term performance of fund managers seems to provide cursory evidence to support this.

Re: Hanging up my spurs

#194

Post by wand3r » Fri, Apr 28, 2017, 1:25 AM UTC

snarf wrote: post #192

wand3r wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have seen almost every interview he's done. Admire a lot about him. Not discrediting him at all, just saying Uber might be too close to call. The one thing I would say is that he is pretty flashy and a bit of a braggard which many are; but going on SharkTank was a bit much. Guy has been super successful objectively my point was just that (to me, subjectively) it sort of feels like he's an entertainer more than an i…

He is naturally a bit puffed up and that was a common critique of him from back in the Google days. I think this personality type is somewhat common among successful seed investors where being a "tech personality" helps with getting deal flow. Name brand institutional investors like Jurvetson and Horowitz don't need to rely on such tricks for deal flow.

For what it's worth I think Steve Jurvetson is the smartest investor in the biz.

Re: Hanging up my spurs

#195

Post by Domenic_S » Fri, Apr 28, 2017, 5:53 AM UTC

nandemo wrote: post #150

Domenic_S wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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 conserv…

Liberals who genuinely have principles are doing productive things, not writing blog posts with all the hip liberal keywords shoehorned in. Zealots? A _despotic regime_? I'm no Trump defender but those descriptors are either intentional hyperbole (ie: virtue signaling), or the author truly has no idea what they mean in the context of world history (which I find impossible to believe).