I'll be curious to see what they come up with
I guess this is where wework was headed before he got forced out
I put together a simple site to try to develop the solution to at least one of the problems of apartment living -- loneliness
Investing in Flow
41–50 of 133 posts
Re: Investing in Flow
#42I used to have a high opinion of venture capital, seeing them as tech visionaries and folks with access to deep pockets that fund the best technology that is truly changing the world. Maybe something has changed, but now all I see are just financial hustlers, working markets, trying to capture or corner spaces with "unicorns", looking for M&A activity that might have already been pre-negotiated looking for something…
I think VCs reflect the market. Alot of the fundamental new things have been done already. So if you’re looking for new sources of huge returns, you’re looking for ways to do things differently vs inventing some new technology.
The other thing is that you have more really rich people who control lots of money without a lot of governance.
Re: Investing in Flow
#43I used to have a high opinion of venture capital, seeing them as tech visionaries and folks with access to deep pockets that fund the best technology that is truly changing the world. Maybe something has changed, but now all I see are just financial hustlers, working markets, trying to capture or corner spaces with "unicorns", looking for M&A activity that might have already been pre-negotiated looking for something…
Andy Grove's response when John Doerr decided to leave intel for kleiner
"Come on, don't you want to be a general manager and own a real P&L? I'll let you run Intel's software division. John, venture capital, that's not a real job. It's like being a real estate agent."
Re: Investing in Flow
#44I used to have a high opinion of venture capital, seeing them as tech visionaries and folks with access to deep pockets that fund the best technology that is truly changing the world. Maybe something has changed, but now all I see are just financial hustlers, working markets, trying to capture or corner spaces with "unicorns", looking for M&A activity that might have already been pre-negotiated looking for something…
Andy Grove's response when John Doerr decided to leave intel for kleiner "Come on, don't you want to be a general manager and own a real P&L? I'll let you run Intel's software division. John, venture capital, that's not a real job. It's like being a real estate agent."
but no one goes there for a real job, they're there for the money, then if they want a real job, they can get one, on top of it with the free time
Re: Investing in Flow
#45I used to have a high opinion of venture capital, seeing them as tech visionaries and folks with access to deep pockets that fund the best technology that is truly changing the world. Maybe something has changed, but now all I see are just financial hustlers, working markets, trying to capture or corner spaces with "unicorns", looking for M&A activity that might have already been pre-negotiated looking for something…
> While the top VC players may have earned the respect by themselves being visionary entrepreneurs (once, decades ago in many cases), the rest of the VC market is filled with also-ran investors who have never been practicing entrepreneurs, following markets like lemmings and looking for a relatively quick buck while not even understanding the markets they invest in. When I hear someone is an investor, especially if they're not one of the handful few of well-known investors, I just think to myself "banker". I don't know if it's always been like this, but it certainly feels like it's gotten worse.
Funny you say that because a16z was a top-5 (maybe even better) performing VC in the 2010s and the guy who wrote this article is the Marc Andreessen who created Mosaic/Netscape.
I think this just goes back to the classic "live long enough to see yourself become the villain". I mean seriously, a $350 million round to a company that doesn't yet exist and is led by a bona fide fraudster. Boggles my mind.
Re: Investing in Flow
#46Let me see if I got this right. Instead of a16z using its resources to actively push for YIMBY changes in society and politics that would actually have positive outcomes on the problems stated, it's investing in the next idea from the WeWork dream seller / scammer, and we don't even know what the venture is? Is this what the venture capital world has become in 2022?
For all their "American Dynamism" talk, Marc is just another classic rich NIMBY.
source: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/08/marc-andre...
Re: Investing in Flow
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Why have 3 roommates in a house when you could have 300 roommates and live in a recently, cheaply converted commercial building designed to be a clone of the Googleplex?"
That actually sounds pretty cool! If that's _not_ what Flow is, I hope somebody does roll with that idea.
Already exists all over the world, just Google “co-living”!
Re: Investing in Flow
#48I see a lot of confusion over why anyone would want to take a stake in an Adam Neumann biz. Some guesses… VCs are looking for return, and quickly, which is why they have glommed on to crypto projects. In the old model, you invest money, wait 5-10 years, and get a payoff when the company goes public or gets sold. With crypto, there is a much more immediate payoff with unregistered securities, AKA “tokens”. And then ma…
There are few industries as cynical as venture capital. They won't ever invest in projects explicitly designed for public welfare because "the economics don't work" or "the innovation isn't there". But they will invest eye-watering sums into financing student newspapers for the middle-aged (Substack) or 'turn your car into a public taxi' businesses, knowing that 90% of them won't amount to anything.
> There are few industries as cynical as venture capital. They won't ever invest in projects explicitly designed for public welfare because "the economics don't work"
As oposed to which industries exactly?
Re: Investing in Flow
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
it is almost certainly some variation on co-living
"Why have 3 roommates in a house when you could have 300 roommates and live in a recently, cheaply converted commercial building designed to be a clone of the Googleplex?"
Co-living is actually pretty great when done properly: it’s not a solution to the housing crisis, and suffers from the same economic problems as WeWork did with office space, but as a resident, it’s great — assuming you want to live with other people.
Most co-living spaces end up going broke (including the one I’ve lived in) so I don’t have much faith in Flow’s viability if it is co-living… but it’d probably be great to live there on VC’s dime (just like WeWork was great when subsidised by VCs).
Re: Investing in Flow
#50So how's Flowcarbon doing? Was that a good idea?