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

A messaging app startup that raised $200M shuts down afters users were 95% fake

fortune.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 252 posts

Re: A messaging app startup that raised $200M shuts down afters users were 95% fake

#61

Post by Solvency »

CharlieDigital wrote: post #44
valianteffort wrote: post #8

Are softbank actually the biggest idiots in VC? It almost seems like everything they invest in is a handshake deal built on "just trust me bro" numbers.

I have brought this up in another comment, but my experience in the VC world is that it operates too heavily based on 4 types of "trust": 1) Institutional trust (Stanford, Harvard, MIT, "ex-FAANG", "ex-McKinsey", etc.), 2) Social trust (someone you know that has already established one of the three other kinds of trust), 3) Serial trust ("3-exits", "former CEO/CTO/VP of..."), and 4) Transitive trust ("Sequoia investe…

Non-native English speaker here. What does "serial" mean in this context? Is it referring to a linear record of achievements/prior employment?

Re: A messaging app startup that raised $200M shuts down afters users were 95% fake

#63

Post by kevincox »

pratchett wrote: post #5

How are messaging apps still getting these valuations when Telegram, signal, Whatsapp and lime chat exist?

They all want to be the WeChat of the rest of the world. They want a platform that people live inside and all other companies just become apps inside their store (where they collect a tax of course).

None of the mentioned apps have managed to do this. Maybe that is because there is no consumer interest, but it doesn't make the goal any less appealing.

Re: A messaging app startup that raised $200M shuts down afters users were 95% fake

#64

Post by cooperaustinj »

Solvency wrote: post #61
CharlieDigital wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have brought this up in another comment, but my experience in the VC world is that it operates too heavily based on 4 types of "trust": 1) Institutional trust (Stanford, Harvard, MIT, "ex-FAANG", "ex-McKinsey", etc.), 2) Social trust (someone you know that has already established one of the three other kinds of trust), 3) Serial trust ("3-exits", "former CEO/CTO/VP of..."), and 4) Transitive trust ("Sequoia investe…

Non-native English speaker here. What does "serial" mean in this context? Is it referring to a linear record of achievements/prior employment?

Sequential/ordered. One after another.

Re: A messaging app startup that raised $200M shuts down afters users were 95% fake

#65

Post by xiphias2 »

valianteffort wrote: post #8

Are softbank actually the biggest idiots in VC? It almost seems like everything they invest in is a handshake deal built on "just trust me bro" numbers.

Not really...the real idiots are Saudis for giving SoftBank more money to play with. Still, so far it doesn't look like oil revenues are going down.

Re: A messaging app startup that raised $200M shuts down afters users were 95% fake

#66

Post by SV_BubbleTime »

makestuff wrote: post #55
rossjudson wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've always had this background thought that it would be a fun job to do "due diligence" on behalf of VCs. I remember being on the receiving end of some of that work, and I wasn't all that impressed. Do today's VCs take technical due diligence seriously? If not, why not?

I think the issue is in the last few years hot startups would just say sorry we are going with another firm. There was so much money flying around it was similar to home buyers buying houses with all cash offers and waiving inspections.

Another positive of the free money era on pause.

Re: A messaging app startup that raised $200M shuts down afters users were 95% fake

#67

Post by gmd63 »

WheelsAtLarge wrote: post #4

I guess this is the way to get rich quick now. Imagine a company with millions of fake users all created by a LLM app.

Yep, cue the "free market" folks celebrating poorly-informed transactions between VCs dumping these companies on construction workers investing to try to fight inflation enough to send their kids to college.

Re: A messaging app startup that raised $200M shuts down afters users were 95% fake

#68

Post by pc86 »

happymellon wrote: post #26
MagicMoonlight wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But you can’t automate that trivially

If I wanted to automate I would use a bulk VoIP service. You are focussing on the wrong point, I only mentioned that because I could get on these services with a disposable number.

From a technical standpoint it's trivial to identify and block voip services.

Phone verification isn't designed to stop spam, it's designed to make it prohibitively expensive to scale spamming, and it seems pretty good at that. If you want to get around phone verification in a quick one-off fashion, yes it's going to be really easy. But there's no way to automate that one-off end run at scale without a lot of money and/or a lot of people. That's the whole point.

Re: A messaging app startup that raised $200M shuts down afters users were 95% fake

#69

Post by orangepurple »

SV_BubbleTime wrote: post #66
makestuff wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the issue is in the last few years hot startups would just say sorry we are going with another firm. There was so much money flying around it was similar to home buyers buying houses with all cash offers and waiving inspections.

Another positive of the free money era on pause.

ZIRP is the technical term
Post reply on HN