My friend and CEO of fido.ai Michal Wroczynski reposted this article with an IMHO important clarification "Conflict is something to embrace. Narcistic Assholes don't have conflict with you - they are just lying all the time. No asshole rule is the most important advice for startups." Based on my personal experience I couldn't agree more!
Can this data mean that a significant part of "gig economy happens to be a fad, similar to 3D TVs or Groupon? I.e. that value of relevant companies could and would soon significantly shrink, just like it happened with Groupon and its clones, after they went through the whole body of SMBs (for most the deals were NOT profitable) and the deal-seeking individuals. The main difference being that attractive pricing for the labor-sharing and capital-sharing platforms was funded and subsidized by VC money, while for Groupon and clones money for reduced pricing went out of pockets of SMBs...
Bitcoin's gains have been buoyed by renewed interest from China, where money is rushing out of the country as its currency, the yuan, continues to weaken...
According to a recent Business Insider Intelligence briefing, citing data from Cryptocompare: "In the first 24 hours of the new year, over 5 million bitcoins were bought in Chinese yuan, equating to $3.8 billion. In contrast, just 53,000 bitcoins were bought in US dollars."
1/3rd of the entire bitcoin supply changed hands in China in a 24 hour time period?
Come on that doesn't even make sense. Perhaps a notional value of 5 million bitcoin by volume were traded, but some phrases make more sense than others.
In retrospect I find this 3-days-old publication quite... amusing)) "... I [SC CEO and Musk cousin L. Rive] asked, 'Elon, hey can I have a family discount' and his answer is, 'Yeah absolutely. Go to TeslaMotor.com, buy the car online, and the price you see there is the family discount,'" Rive told Tech Insider. "Everyone gets a family discount."
So there you have it: Musk does not believe in preferential treatment for family members.
Unless you own 100% of a company, it isn't really ethical to give yourself a discount or freebies. And wouldn't be legal unless handled correctly with the tax man.
You probably didn't arbitrarily give that to yourself. If the company decides to give employees discounts for some reason, like staff retention, that's quite different from just picking up whatever you like from the warehouse and walking home with it.
Their impact on oil prices today, and in the foreseeable future, is inconsequential.
And sure Uber says it 'actively aims to reduce the number of cars on the road' but that's just lofty marketing speak. They just want to sell you a taxi service. But Silicon Valley startups can't just sell you useful services and products, they need to change the world.
> And now they get the largest investment yet from a party that is NOT interested in falling oil prices...
Uber's impact will be the same whether they invest or not.
Saudia Arabia needs to diversify its holdings and sovereign funding sources as oil is a very narrow and volatile vertical upon which they currently hang their hat (and almost all of their funding).
Saudia Arabia is like an investment portfolio where 90% of its income comes from a single stock. They need to diversify and hedge.
> And now they get the largest investment yet from a party that is NOT interested in falling oil prices... What am I missing here?
Saudi Arabia (and even moreso prior to the 1990-1991 war, Kuwait, which was among the sources of the tensions leading to that war) invest quite heavily in diverse investments with a focus both on growth and avoiding having fortunes too closely tied to oil.
It seems smart for a sovereign wealth fund to try to diversify its holdings. Exxon and Chevron also invest in renewables, despite the fact that renewables potentially cannibalize oil sales.
earlier this year the deputy crown prince declared his intent to sell 10% of saudi amarco and said he wants to diversify holdings. they're in really bad shape right now.
I have great respect for Garry Tan. However, I find the key quote on "how profitable Hollywood can be at best" a bit strange, and want to correct his statement below based on specific data. Here's the quote "...11X return on capital. That's the highest grossing film ever made, and a good proxy for how profitable Hollywood can be at best."
Since 3,800X return on capital for Peter Thiel's FB investment is an obvious outlier/best case scenario, let's compare apples to apples and take the best case for Hollywood-type investments:
"Paranormal Activity With just $15,000, the visionaries behind this project created a movie that took in a worldwide gross of almost $197 million." That sounds like 13133X return to me, which is even greater than 3800X...
See http://www.businesspundit.com/10-most-profitable-low-budget-...
The real point here isn't really Hollywood vs SV but rather that VC portfolios can outperform on just one stellar investment despite the rest being losers bc the ROIs can get so high. So paying a premium to get into a contested round of a high growth startup is worth it if you think the company can be one of these outliers. For example: a "mere" 20x return on one of ten companies will more than pay for the other 9 companies that lost you money on.
I just don't see how that invalidates the anecdote. Because if you're investing "$100 million in a $1 billion company" you're probably aren't expecting a 20x return, not to mention a greater one. So that would suggest that there is something else going on, which is the greater point of the NYT article.
If you are investing at that late of stage you'll likely negotiate downside protection like liquidation preferences which significantly de risk the deal. In which case a 2-10x return is actually really good b/c you are not expecting to lose all your money in your individual investments. So in a late stage portfolio you would break even on a few and hopefully make returns on one or two.
Sure. I'm not saying it's a bad deal, just that it supports what the NYT article is saying and that the anecdote would therefor be relevant.
> Within Silicon Valley, Andreessen Horowitz is famous for bidding valuations to heights that make rivals uncomfortable. To offset the dilution of ownership that comes from such prices, Andreessen Horowitz [...] increases the amount of money it invests. The firm often kicks in more than the entrepreneur asks for, according to rival V.C.s who have been involved in these deals. “They want to basically change the table stakes in a poker game,” said Greg Kidd, an angel investor in several companies Andreessen later funded. “There are some other folks who can cut checks like that, but there aren’t that many.”
> More than is the case with other firms, the fate of Andreessen Horowitz may be closely tied to that of the overall tech market. If prices remain buoyant, the eye-popping valuations of the firm’s top-performing companies will keep it profitable and losses will be containable. But if the market turns, Andreessen Horowitz could have serious trouble.
> Worse, Andreessen Horowitz isn’t just a beneficiary of behavior that’s driving up valuations. If a bubble is forming, it is ultimately because too much money is chasing too few companies. But the firm’s own aggressive bidding may be partly responsible. “Because there is competition for deals, when you have actors in the market showing no price discipline, it drives up the cost for everyone,” said one investor.
And by the way, for completeness, the company in question sold for $2.6 billion three months after the article and post was written.
That is not a good comparison because the absolute return is 1-2 orders of magnitude below what Peter Thiel and Accel made from their Facebook investments.
Given the amount of funds VCs and big Hollywood firms control, an occasional $100-200M absolute return does not significantly change their portfolio success.
