Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Capital-As-a-Service: A New Operating System for Early Stage Investing

medium.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 42 posts

Re: Capital-As-a-Service: A New Operating System for Early Stage Investing

#31

Post by thisisit »

This might sound a bit cynical but it seems we are at a stage where using the words - data, ML or AI seems enough.

The post while being vague constantly throws around the word - "data". What data really? If the Anti Portfolio discussion from yesterday (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15547136) is any indication, it is difficult to predict growth - data or not. For example, there already was Friendster. What data will help in deciding whether to invest in early stage Facebook? Or what data will help in decide investing in Uber? Today's startup are about growing, engagement and then possibly trying to make money. The truth remains even the best will fail at the last step.

Re: Capital-As-a-Service: A New Operating System for Early Stage Investing

#32

Post by ashnyc »

internet company are global by default now, however VC are not . Social capital is going global from day one. One of the first startup that applied to social capital was a Mexican startup. It was much easier for a Mexican company to get in touch social capital than a local mexican vc. Makes perfect sense. Social capital will go where no VC will go . Mongolia may be next

Re: Capital-As-a-Service: A New Operating System for Early Stage Investing

#33

Post by ucaetano »

vm wrote: post #25
ucaetano wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they built a system to analyze company metrics and thus screen investments at scale Wait, so they invented... financial analysis? KPIs? BI? Really?

Obviously they didn't invent financial analysis. They built a system that does this at scale: 1) collects and organizes the right data and spits out analysis -- this can be painful from the many times I've done it. Investment banks hire armies of young analysts and pay them six figures to do this at scale 2) made it self-serve for entrepreneurs seeking funding -- not having to do the CRM/pipeline mgmt process associa…

> They built a system that does this at scale

That is very easy to do, but

> They built a system that does this at scale and delivers good results

Still hasn't been done.

Re: Capital-As-a-Service: A New Operating System for Early Stage Investing

#35

Post by hobofan »

vm wrote: post #25
ucaetano wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they built a system to analyze company metrics and thus screen investments at scale Wait, so they invented... financial analysis? KPIs? BI? Really?

Obviously they didn't invent financial analysis. They built a system that does this at scale: 1) collects and organizes the right data and spits out analysis -- this can be painful from the many times I've done it. Investment banks hire armies of young analysts and pay them six figures to do this at scale 2) made it self-serve for entrepreneurs seeking funding -- not having to do the CRM/pipeline mgmt process associa…

I am not sure if you are aware, but every VC worth its salt has built such a system focused on early- or mid-stage startups by now, or is currently doing so. It's not really anything revolutionary.

It also doesn't seem like they go for a Moneyball approach as you suggested in your earlier comment. They are going for previously undiscovered top startups, and not sub-top startups for 10% of the investment sum (that would be a Moneyball approach).

> made it self-serve for entrepreneurs seeking funding

Not sure where you are getting that from.

Re: Capital-As-a-Service: A New Operating System for Early Stage Investing

#38

Post by woah »

EGreg wrote: post #8
bactrian wrote: post #4

The flaw here is using the wrong metrics. Once a company has found a repeatable and growing business model, it’s trivial to raise money and there’s no reason to pick Social Capital over anyone else. The big market opportunity is to fund startups at the very earliest signs of success. When all they have to show is some code and a few Hacker News upvotes or GitHub stars. Someone is going to make YCs returns look weak b…

From my experience, most of it is about connections. I have seen $41 MM thrown at startups like Color and them failing a month later! Why just recently, FileCoin raised tens of millions from VCs, before goong on to raise $200 MM from crypto holders around the world for a product that hasn't even been developed, in a space where MaidSafe and IPFS etc. already exist. How? Because it was touted by CoinList, started by a…

Filecoin is made by the people who made IPFS, and it is an incentivization system for IPFS. Maidsafe has been around for more than 10 years and has yet to launch, and it’s unclear what exactly it does and if it even competes with Filecoin at all.

Re: Capital-As-a-Service: A New Operating System for Early Stage Investing

#40

Post by sharemywin »

burnte wrote: post #27
tschellenbach wrote: post #26

1. Good companies won't pitch you, it's common for VCs to reach out to the top companies while they are not raising funding. So good luck running your analysis on data you don't have. 2. There are no metrics that identify a good from a bad investment. Maybe this would work in some cases for later stage investments. But even at the later stage the metrics are all over the place. 3. Companies applying to this VC fund w…

1. Good and great companies actively seek out funding, especially at early stages. Lots of good and great ones slowly build and get contacted, too. 2. There certainly are good metrics, otherwise the basic tenets of business that have evolved over the past 5,000 years would exist. There may not be metrics that say if a certain product/service will be a smash hit or not, but it did not take a crystal ball to see that P…

Groupon should have figured out how to be self service for merchants. maybe combined with an ebates. maybe even pushed into a influencer marketing.

Amazon would have probably gone the way of pets had it not found AWS.

Post reply on HN