Comment by logicallee | Hacker News Reader

Comment by logicallee | Hacker News Reader

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take facebook:

1: Mark Zuckerberg wasn't a particularly social guy, so his founders/product fit was 0.

2. product/market fit: Facebook was a social network just for schools, this doesn't really show any product/market fit. it's a super niche product with no obvious revenue model.

3. founder had zero social proof. couldn't even bag any advertising clients.

4. founder didn't get along great with team, in fact all team members sued him.

5. the very first verison of the site looked and features it had in 2004 - https://www.quora.com/What-did-the-first-version-of-Facebook... does not show that much progress or activity.

6. Mark was just a Harvard student, so were the other team members, no dedicated staff at all.

7. No basis to judge.

8. No prior past experience to judge from.

Based on the above there is a 0.00% chance that you would fund Facebook at the seed stage, at any valuation. Out of 8 standards, you would have to give them a 0/8 on nearly all of them.

but hey, the fact that your investment thesis fails with perfect hindsight, doesn't mean it can't succeed when things are a lot more murky. go get 'em.

> Based on the above there is a 0.00% chance that you would fund Facebook at the seed stage, at any valuation. Out of 8 standards, you would have to give them a 0/8 on nearly all of them. but hey, the fact that your investment thesis fails with perfect hindsight, doesn't mean it can't succeed when things are a lot more murky. go get 'em.

I don't know if the given strategy would work, but saying it would not have bought FB isn't really useful in any way.

After all, to be a successful investor you don't need to invest in every successful company; you only need your portfolio as a whole to be successful.

Zuck was on IRC coding at the time, IIRC. He had also built and launched some other software before Facebook.

Coming out of that era with that cred would put him higher than most at his age.

You misunderstand. My point is lowglow would not have given those things weight. So even with perfect 20/20 hindsight, we know that based on his 8 criteria he would have Facebook a No thanks.

(More specifically, he wouldn't have given them the time of day or even so much as returned an email, a 0/10 across 8 categories means that it's not worth so much as a reply.)

EDIT: I didn't realize you're lowglow. My point stands. You need better investment criteria :)

Which is why I said "loose" criteria, not a rigid ruleset. ::)

Facebook and Apple are always given as the exceptions to all typical precedent when it comes to VCs.

Yet these two are the definition of outliers in terms of value created by a long shot.

I disagree with you and think they're completely typical, and that Zuckerberg's and Steve Jobs' megalomania and complete insanity of vision are completely typical of that success story. Take airbnb for example.

you get the idea.

I am saying that lowglow is like an NBA basketball coach who will only draft white men under 5 feet tall and over 30, on the theory that they'll try harder since they have something to prove. well, good for him.

it's true that Michael Jordan is an outlier at 6 ft 6 in. But if you're only going to draft white men over thirty and under 5 feet tall, your team is going to suck.

The investment thesis needs revision.

This is an example of just Facebook. I think all big time VCs have turned down mega companies that would have made them $$$$$.

Also, Zuck did have a crazy grind work ehtic which would have gotten him most likely 1 point. And he did have a good history of projects he had built before and shown competence, maybe not multi-million dollar ventures but a lot of good chops.

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