41–50 of 70 posts
This article says absolutely nothing of substance. It takes no side and makes no argument. "some things look like red flags. maybe that's ok. maybe it's not. someone, somewhere, will figure it out eventually." Paul Graham's blog and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race.
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don't forget -Being non-male
I was going to write "not male presenting" but nobody would see the comment with that much polarization
Or was it somehow a joke or satire even though many of us have heard exactly that message in a serious context before?
The red flag inherent to venture capital is venture capital. Society recently felt government accountable to the range and gradient of human conditions was immoral so it changed the rules to let private power pick and choose and private power is pricing everyone out of homes and food, which is apparently quite moral. Nevermind the state of reality we leave behind for the future; we’ll be dead. Those old religious met…
This essay becomes more fun -- and more useful -- if we apply OP's standards to other areas of trust and risk. For example: - Are there no absolute red flags in online dating? (Some ex-convicts with teardrop tattoos may be fully reformed.) - Are there no absolute red flags in getting into a taxi (Some angry drivers with alcohol on their breath may be capable of getting to the destination.) In such situations, the tho…
The difference is that you only have one life, which you are risking in the examples, whereas VCs have many dollars, of which they only risk a part on each trade.
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Aren't those clearly frauds for the people participating, but as businesses they're just somehow structured in a way to be sound investments for those on the outside?
If those were frauds, there would be ton of lawsuits by now given their history. It may or may not be immoral for participants, but illegality is a much higher bar.
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yeah but nowadays everyone is constantly calling everyone out, everything is a shitcoin if it's not your favorite thing, etc, so too much noise in that
Or... a completely brand new market with billions of dollars sloshing around, varying between completely unregulated and effectively unregulated, is actually rife with actual fraud.
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If only Theranos had been founded by a man, they would've gotten funded and would've revolutionized personalized medicine.
While tempted to say something snarky here (for example, “wait for it….”) I’ll just say that this comment makes zero sense to me. There is widely-available evidence that women-founded startups receive less than 2% of Venture funding. That one person VCs saw as “pattern-matching” enough to get funding was huckster doesn’t say anything about women’s general competence, nor paints a great picture of how VC funding is al…
That women-founded startups receive very little funding overall is also not surprising: there are very few of them (startups being defined narrowly: a company focused on hypergrowth and using VC). What do you expect, women founding x% of startups but getting x*10% of funding?
> Remember: Red flags are very rarely outright fraud, and when they are, it’s often obvious only in hindsight...Look at Enron! Look at Madoff! The author's two examples of obvious fraud were called out by many people as fraudulent years before it became public knowledge. It's possible to do your own research and conclude the zeitgeist is wrong before it becomes common knowledge. It would make the argument stronger to…
It's only hindsight that shows whether your research showed something was obviously fraud.
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> pricing everyone out of homes and food The food part couldn’t be more wrong: https://www.ers.usda.gov/amber-waves/2020/november/average-s...
This is an article from three years ago lol. I see bottled water being sold for $6 for a 12 pack when it used to be $2 for a 24. Convince me that isn't price gouging. It's literally plastic and water.
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Bottled water is a bizarre example to pick for price gouging of food, since water is available for essentially free for almost everyone in America. When it has a cost it is measured in $/kilogallons not $/liter
I suspect it was picked because for millions of American's tap water is not safe to drink.