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Comment by disgruntledphd2 | Hacker News Reader

yeah, after reading that thread I have no idea what Benedict Evans thinks a VC is and isn't.

Does anyone understand this?

Evans is distinguishing between people who are full-time VCs, and anyone who has ever written a check to a business that doesn't have revenue yet.

A part time carpenter is still a carpenter. Evans claim wasn’t that Murdoch is an amateur. His claim was that Murdoch was categorically not involved with VC.

If you write an article titled "Electricians Are Turning Homes Into Firetraps" and then cite the fact that I improperly swapped out an outlet in my home as evidence that I'm an electrician, you should expect pushback.

But the article works equally well for Uber or Lyft or indeed We work, all of which were funded by professional VCs.

I really like Ben Evans, but he's ignoring the main thrust of the article and nitpicking about definitions.

That's rarely a sign of someone who has a strong argument against a piece.

If it works equally well for Uber or Lyft or WeWork, then trying to shoehorn Theranos in since it's a spectacular fraud that doesn't really fit the definition was a bad decision.

That's rarely a sign of a piece that makes a strong argument.

The article covered WeWork much, much more extensively than Theranos.

I know its against the guidelines, but did you read the article?

Trying to shoehorn in Theranos does not preclude covering WeWork, so I'm not sure how you read my comment to imply that it did.

Theranos is mentioned three times in the article, and always in the company of more cogent examples of VC-funded companies- Juicero, Uber, and WeWork. The quibbling over Theranos really does look like a distraction away from the main points of the article.

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