Andreessen Horowitz Sells Some Lyft Shares to Prince Al-Waleed | Hacker News Reader

Andreessen Horowitz Sells Some Lyft Shares to Prince Al-Waleed

wsj.com

18 pointssethbannon12 comments

On one side of a transaction you have VCs, who have long investment horizons and are highly incentivized to maximize returns, taking a short-term profit on an investment long before it has (theoretically) reached its potential. On the other side of the transaction you have GM and a Saudi Prince.

I wonder who is the smart money...

Did AH exit completely, or are they just getting some liquidity for other early-stage investments?

Typically a VC fund does not re-invest profits back into other startups — the profits are disbursed to LPs

VC funds tend to dislike small exits: they're not enough to return the fund and they can't re-invest the capital.

don't twitters activists see the irony of using a platform owned by horrible misogynist and human right violaters like Prince Al-Waleed.

From wikipedia: Al-Waleed is considered a proponent for female emancipation in the Saudi world. He has financed the training of Hanadi Zakaria al-Hindi to become the first Saudi woman commercial airline pilot and has stated on her graduation that he is "in full support of Saudi ladies working in all fields". Al-Hindi became certified to fly within Saudi Arabia in 2014.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Waleed_bin_Talal#First_Saud...

Do you assume he's a misogynist and a human rights violater because he is from Saudi Arabia?

There's a lot of rumors and allegations around him - this article goes through some: http://www.businessinsider.com/prince-alwaleed-2012-1

- accused of rape (case went to court)

- keeps dwarves as basically 'court jesters'

- tosses dwarves

- maims animals instead of shooting to kill

- poorly treats workers

- "But several sources say this pilot, Hanadi Zakariya Hindi, has hardly flown any of Alwaleed's aircraft, certainly not his massive jets. They say that when she was hired, Alwaleed told his aviation staff that she never would."

then again, "Al-Waleed announced that he would donate his entire fortune to charity at an unspecified date, in order to foster cultural understanding and empower women among other motivations." is a pretty big move if true

There's good and bad in most people, and most people do good and bad things on a daily basis, let alone over the course of a lifetime. It's quite possible he mistreats his servants and maims animals, but also intends to donate his fortune at a future unspecified date. (And if you wanna talk concrete - he did send a large cheque to the mayor of NYC immediately after 9/11 that was ultimately refused for political reasons).

I don't know the Prince at all except for the occasional news article (including the one you've linked, coincidentally), but my objection was to GP's blatant lumping in him him with the rest of the Sauds (some of whom are undoubtedly very bad), and how that's acceptable because he's, well, a Saud.

Yes, how is it we assume he's a misogynist and human rights violater for being an integral part of a government that does these very things?

You can not be serious? Of course that's why.

>a government that does these very things?

not to forget world wide sponser for these ideas .

He's an integral part of what government? He doesn't have an explicit government role in Saudi Arabia - he's just the (very rich) CEO of a holding company.

And let's say he was even a part of Saudi government - how dare you presume that he's a misogynist because of that? Maybe we should have a quick conversation about how Obama is a racist because of he's an integral part of the state apparatus that institutionalizes racism and incarceration of black people, eh?

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