The "Tourist" Investors Flooding Silicon Valley With Money Will Go Home One Day | Hacker News Reader

The "Tourist" Investors Flooding Silicon Valley With Money Will Go Home One Day

buzzfeed.com

62 pointsrobk23 comments

While the big "tourists," eg Fidelity, are investing, they aren't investing in the early stage froth. That's not to say Uber & co's valuations haven't been high, but I've found most investors to be here. Many of them have been here for quite some time too.

This article is a whole lot of speculation without much substance. What I'm most curious about is LP's effect on VC fund distribution. The big funds are still raising big funds, General Catalyst as an example this week. They still need to allocate that capital.

To answer my own question : I guess they'll be allocating it to the highest growth / most safe opportunities though. And at better valuations.

> The big funds are still raising big funds, General Catalyst as an example this week. They still need to allocate that capital.

After the dotcom bust, there were many cases where VC funds just returned uninvested money to LPs, as it was evident that the IPO market had dried up.

The search for yield... a predicted consequence of 7 years of zero percent interest rates. Last time around it was investors seeking yields in low-quality mortgages. This time, they're investing in low-quality Silicon Valley startups. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austrian_business_cycle_theory

That would be somewhat ironic - startups have no profits for the most part, let alone dividends.

But they have growth...

Capital gains is a yield.

Considering that central banks are creating a new norm of negative rates around the world, I doubt that foreign investors who are there to seek yields will go away anytime soon.

Seems like that would simply cause deflation in equal measure once people catch on.

Wait... El-Erian said "re-up".

When did this urban/inner-city drug culture term become mainstream?

(for the etymology geeks here, El-Erian means "of the aryans", no not the nazi aryans, the original aryans)

The Wire

Ah -- that would explain it. I never watched that show myself.

most def

I actually wasn't aware of it being either street slang or associated with The Wire. It seemed a pretty familiar term to me. A few different online sources suggest it started out as military slang to mean "re-enlist."

And the military usage goes back to the early 1900s:

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/re-up

Interesting note, The earliest mentions of Rig Veda gods found thus far were not in India but in Northern Syria.

There's a theory that "devi" and "devil" are connected. That the devis of the so-called pagans became the devils post christian conversion.

I remember watching the episode of Simpsons where the Navy produced a series of music videos with subliminal messaging back when it first came out (apparently in 2001).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Kids_on_the_Blecch

Re-up as a term to re-enlist or re-sign up has been around for at least 15 years.

Interesting. I first heard of this term when Nicki Minaj came out with "The Re-up."

Clickbait article about an article about impending doom.

I stopped after the first sentence starting with a conjunction.

Of course it will. Investment will ebb and flow in cycles, just like it always has. Back in 2001 was a massive pullback in VC investment, and we very well may see something similar if there's a catastrophic downturn in the tech economy.

But it will always come back. There is no place like Silicon Valley because of the critical mass of talent and greed. There are far too many greedy people who want to make money that will always bring in the money.

If you think SV is greedy, go work in New York at an investment bank for a couple years. SV is full of naive do-gooders.

Loldidn'tread

Reply on news.ycombinator.com