I think it's pompous for both you and Sam Altman to be wasting our threads with these bets.
Agreed; I would have greatly preferred he emailed me.
I realize now it wasn't posted by Sam--merely his blog.
Tell Sam Altman: I will take your bet
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Re: Tell Sam Altman: I will take your bet
#92When I moved from SF to Boston (after co-founding Inkling six years ago), the top two things I was worried about are a) a less pro-startup culture, and b) less available early-stage money. This really doesn't help either point. We need more early-stage money here and more optimism, not less.
Understandable. The seed environment in Boston is sub-optimal. But hopefully it will continue to change as more people like me band together with friends to start seed stage VC firms. The market is just too good to not take advantage while there's no competition and no crazy valuations.
Re: Tell Sam Altman: I will take your bet
#93Earlier quoted context omitted.
The bet is a punctuation point on a discussion. Sam is already taking risk on current valuations, another $100K here or there isn't going to move the needle. The real stakes are reputation for prognostication. And the point to me is getting VCs on the other side of the debate to put a public stake in the ground, and hopefully give their arguments for why. So I don't find this taker particularly interesting. In the co…
a fair point. i didn't define "VC" well enough. if another VC from a top-tier fund with at least $500MM under management would like to take the bet, i will make the same bet once more.
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Re: Tell Sam Altman: I will take your bet
#941. Dropbox: NPV is less than 10B. Will probably get brought for 3-4B by bigco if bigco can transcend internal politics. Not sure who will buy them - most probably Microsoft under Ndella. 2. Palantir: I have some experience with working with Palantir FDEs who were marketed to BigCo as 'gift from god to solve all problems'. They were pretty useless. I think Palantir is basically shit. Wait and watch.
Will probably get brought for 3-4B by bigco if bigco can transcend internal politics. Not sure who will buy them - most probably Microsoft under Ndella. I'm asking in all sincerity - what does Dropbox have that Microsoft would want? Their OneDrive technology is "good enough" for the vast majority of users. Latest statistics I could find were that DropBox has 200,000,000 users and that 96% of them were free user accou…
Same reasons MS ended up buying Skype, despite having a near decade lead in tech (NetMeeting before MSN Messenger), 300M active users, etc. etc.? MS even had VoIP-to-PSTN in the 90s, albeit via a poor partnership with MCI.
Same reasons MS ended up investing in FB, instead of turning Messenger (think: you've already got everyone and their friends using it!) into a good social network?
Re: Tell Sam Altman: I will take your bet
#95I'm surprised at someone actually taking the other side of this bet as I thought Sam was _very_ conservative on his projections. 1) Any one of those companies (besides Pinterest IMO) could conceivably achieve a market valuation of $200B by Jan 1, 2020. 2) Again any one of those companies (besides Teespring IMO) could conceivably achieve a market valuation of $27B by Jan 1, 2020. 3) Easy win for Sam.
Seriously? As I write this, Microsoft, the largest purveyor of enterprise software in the world, is worth roughly $340 billion. Oracle? Less than $200 billion. Hell, Amazon, the company that Dropbox runs on isn't worth $200 billion. You honestly believe that any one of those companies, none of which has been around for more than ten years, could reach a market cap of $200B within 5 years? Either you are incredibly be…
> You honestly believe that any one of those companies, none of which has been around for more than ten years, could reach a market cap of $200B within 5 years?
That's not the bet. The bet is that they will, in aggregate be worth $200B.
"Proposition 1: On January 1st, 2020, these companies
will be worth at least $200B in aggregate."
Re: Tell Sam Altman: I will take your bet
#96I'm surprised at someone actually taking the other side of this bet as I thought Sam was _very_ conservative on his projections. 1) Any one of those companies (besides Pinterest IMO) could conceivably achieve a market valuation of $200B by Jan 1, 2020. 2) Again any one of those companies (besides Teespring IMO) could conceivably achieve a market valuation of $27B by Jan 1, 2020. 3) Easy win for Sam.
Seriously? As I write this, Microsoft, the largest purveyor of enterprise software in the world, is worth roughly $340 billion. Oracle? Less than $200 billion. Hell, Amazon, the company that Dropbox runs on isn't worth $200 billion. You honestly believe that any one of those companies, none of which has been around for more than ten years, could reach a market cap of $200B within 5 years? Either you are incredibly be…
Yes, seriously. Which company is anyone's guess, and some are more likely than others, but it's conceivable a single company from that list could achieve a $200B valuation on a 5 year time scale.
Re: Tell Sam Altman: I will take your bet
#97Earlier quoted context omitted.
Seriously? As I write this, Microsoft, the largest purveyor of enterprise software in the world, is worth roughly $340 billion. Oracle? Less than $200 billion. Hell, Amazon, the company that Dropbox runs on isn't worth $200 billion. You honestly believe that any one of those companies, none of which has been around for more than ten years, could reach a market cap of $200B within 5 years? Either you are incredibly be…
> You honestly believe that any one of those companies, none of which has been around for more than ten years, could reach a market cap of $200B within 5 years? That's not the bet. The bet is that they will, in aggregate be worth $200B. "Proposition 1: On January 1st, 2020, these companies will be worth at least $200B in aggregate." Edit: Can't read. The parent is in response to the grandparent, not the bet.
He was referencing my statement above, not the bet.
Re: Tell Sam Altman: I will take your bet
#98Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's welsher talk, if you make a bet and a person accepts then you have to take the bet or STFU. If you believe the person will not follow through that's one thing, maybe both parties should put $100K in escrow, talking about the purpose of the bet is weak.
Maybe he should follow through but the bet isn't interesting anymore.
you know what, this guy appears to be betting with a far larger share of his assets than sama is, he's putting his money where his mouth is
maybe you shouldn't be so dismissive
Re: Tell Sam Altman: I will take your bet
#99sama and mdlm: since you're effectively going to lock up $100k each for 5 years, how about you both give the interest on that capital to charity?