Instant Company (1999)

Yes, "Partners at two prominent Silicon Valley venture capital firms deceived four of the five founders of a start-up company, withholding critical information and thereby cheating them out of tens of millions of dollars, according to a lawsuit.....The suit named J. William Gurley of Benchmark Capital and John R. Johnston of August Capital, both original investors in Epinions and directors of the company, and an Epinions co-founder, Nirav N. Tolia."

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/26/technology/founders-of-web...

I don't understand the Silicon Valley philosophy. Why should people be rewarded for being reckless to such extent?

It reminds me of a point by Nassim Taleb which claims that if you look at the absolute top securities traders at any given time, they are usually ones who took massive poorly-calculated risks which happened to work out - The best traders in the long run are usually not the most prominent ones. They get smaller rewards over long periods of time but most of them end their careers with a net gain for their clients.

Unfortunately, because VCs are themselves reckless, they think that recklessness is a virtue and only invest in it. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

The fact that 9 out of 10 startups fail is merely the result of this attitude that VCs have. They managed to turn this terrible ratio into some kind of industry standard. Maybe it's actually extremely inefficient.

Somehow I feel that's axiomatic...

OTOH, you could be making a joke that just whooshed over my head.

Point still stands. Had they bought sawhorses instaed of 4x4s, they would be done in minutes.

Execution, yeah.