Hacker News Reader

> While the top VC players may have earned the respect by themselves being visionary entrepreneurs (once, decades ago in many cases), the rest of the VC market is filled with also-ran investors who have never been practicing entrepreneurs, following markets like lemmings and looking for a relatively quick buck while not even understanding the markets they invest in. When I hear someone is an investor, especially if they're not one of the handful few of well-known investors, I just think to myself "banker". I don't know if it's always been like this, but it certainly feels like it's gotten worse.

Funny you say that because a16z was a top-5 (maybe even better) performing VC in the 2010s and the guy who wrote this article is the Marc Andreessen who created Mosaic/Netscape.

I think this just goes back to the classic "live long enough to see yourself become the villain". I mean seriously, a $350 million round to a company that doesn't yet exist and is led by a bona fide fraudster. Boggles my mind.

Becoming a villain is a choice. There are plenty of counterexamples in our industry, folks who succeeded in tech and/or finance and didn't go on to make investments in fraudsters and whole industries of fraud.

Yeah mostly I meant that Marc isn't some Wall Street banker bro, he's was foundational to the internet, silicon valley and modern life.

I figured it's valuable that he did create something that's valued at nearly $4 billion dollars today, but then I looked at it and he did raise $22 billion.

The question is, is it trivial to take $22 billion dollars and create a $4 billion business? In some cases I would say yeah, its still valuable. I'm not entirely sure I could create a $4 billion business regardless how much money you gave me. On the other hand its real estate, so I could just buy $22 billion of real estate and hopefully come out somewhere just shy of that amount. I'm not sure but the spread between $22 and $4 leaves plenty of room for error.

But there is something to say about failing. Traders that have lost a lot of money are more valuable than those that have never had any downs. But from hearing Adam Neumann speak, it strikes me as though he hasn't learned any lessons. He's a master at deflection and has an excuse or explanation for everything. He has no self awareness or humility. You can listen to his interview from 2021 and it's really incredible.

Anyway, that's all to say I'm surprised anyone would give him another chance.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dgp-CM-gQik

The old joke goes: "What's the easiest way to make a small fortune? Start with a large one."

Andy Grove's response when John Doerr decided to leave intel for kleiner

"Come on, don't you want to be a general manager and own a real P&L? I'll let you run Intel's software division. John, venture capital, that's not a real job. It's like being a real estate agent."

but no one goes there for a real job, they're there for the money, then if they want a real job, they can get one, on top of it with the free time

Occasionally, VCs fund something that changes the world, but I don't think that is necessary (and maybe also not even strictly sufficient) to make money in that business.

I think VCs reflect the market. Alot of the fundamental new things have been done already. So if you’re looking for new sources of huge returns, you’re looking for ways to do things differently vs inventing some new technology.

The other thing is that you have more really rich people who control lots of money without a lot of governance.