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Comment by mbesto | Hacker News Reader

No offense to Chamath (what I know of him, I think he's generally pretty smart and likable), but this is a bit of a stretch:

> He said that investors pump money into “shitty, useless, idiotic companies,” rather than addressing real problems like climate change and disease. Palihapitiya currently runs his own VC firm, Social Capital, which focuses on funding companies in sectors like healthcare and education.

http://www.socialcapital.com/portfolio/

19 Enterprise software companies

10 Financial services companies

5 consumer companies

including companies like this: https://www.bustle.com/about

These companies are focusing on "real problems"?

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Your list isn't complete. In addition to what you mentioned, there are:

6 Education

3 "Frontier"

13 Healthcare

That seems like a pretty healthy mix. By only providing select points of the complete picture, aren't you contributing to the problem he's describing?

I provided those data points because they represent more than half of the portfolio. I never said that SC didn't make investments in "real problems", I was making a point that they were also investing in companies that could be considered "shitty, useless, idiotic companies" and/or "weren't solving 'real problems'".

> That seems like a pretty healthy mix.

Yes, these guys are very good investors, no doubt. As a fellow capitalist I too would have made the same bets. But that has nothing to do with my point - which is the vision of the fund is inconsistent with what I would consider the vision of the majority of the companies that are invested in.

> aren't you contributing to the problem he's describing?

How so?

I'm increasingly convinced this sort of rhetoric is about advertising values to attract founders who care about alignment thereof rather than any real indication of their own investment choices. Social Capital isn't exactly focusing their money on getting poor kids from the hood into upper-quintile careers.

So, (actual) virtue signaling?

To save you a click:

"NEW FORCE IN MEDIA

...

Whether you’re searching for what’s happening in politics, what’s streaming this weekend, where to find size-inclusive clothing, ways to give back, or how much coffee to put in your coffee, we’re here to help you explore every topic that interests you."

From http://www.bustle.com/about

>These companies are focusing on "real problems"?

If you listen to the talk he says many times "Get the Money" then focus on the real problems

The key here is you have to get the money first, then you have the power and resources to make social change and fix the real problems

So his mix of investments does not have to 100% "real problems" like climate change, his (stated) goal is to get capital from those other projects and use that to fund other companies that focus on "Real Problems"

And InstaEdu, within the education section, was that site where students would pay people to do their homework. It was just a place where students could cheat.

Incidentally, it was at this point in the story I went from "hey, this guy has a good point" to "hey, this is just a sales pitch for his VC firm".

Oh well.

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