Andreessen Horowitz Tech Site Future.com Shuts Down, Staff Leave
businessinsider.com
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Ah, the legacy media with their pesky questions. Why can't people just accept that Adam Neumann is a visionary, and that pay-to-earn crypto games are the future? Guess I'll have to start my own paper to set the record straight! /s
Despite the premium domain name (future.com), the site itself looks and reads like your typical Medium.com publication.
A couple of these have significant engagement (one of them has 483 comments), but most have 1 or 2 points & 0 comments.
There are good journalists out there, they just have been long fired from their news rooms and have accepted that the owners of the mass media are in control of the narrative.
The only useless stories on FTX I’ve seen has been through HN comments calling them out. The FT, Bloomberg (in particular, Matt Levine) and Journal have each called it a fraud from the beginning.
Levine wrote a whole enjoyable issue of Bloomberg about crypto that was moderately bullish! He thinks it’s kinda neat. That’s nowhere near the hype you hear from the bitcoin weirdos, but, you know, much more bullish than “a scam that should be made illegal,” which is also a mainstream take.
You may be missing the sarcasm. I think crypto is neat, intellectually. I also think it’s a scam, and everyone in it will lose money and reputation, but I’m not going to put one hundred percent confidence in that view.
These are mutually compatible opinions. Read Levine’s insider trading takes and see if you think he’s pro insider trading.
Here's a link to the (excellent) crypto story you mentioned: https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2022-the-crypto-story/
But no, of course, it was because they had "questions" and everything in tech is Adam Neumann and Theranos.
I have had a target painted on my back before by someone with lots of money because they couldn't take a piece of criticism that I had for their company. Do you know how that feels? Normalizing retaliatory behavior by rich people (and yes, this outfit was part and parcel of a media strategy that included that) is destructive to civil society - while what the NYT did (though unprofessional) is still a normal aspect of a marketplace of ideas.
Compare this behavior with Jeff Bezos. For all his faults, he did something infinitely classier. He actually bankrolled a news organization that has a global presence and practices journalistic excellence - and did not try to meddle in its editorial policy beyond that (or if he did, it was so subtle as to be imperceptible).
The goal of journalism is to "afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted", so why should publishers not take a critical stance toward some of the most comfortable people in the history of humankind?
If there's something happening in tech that worthy of criticism, criticize it. If there's something worthy of praise, praise it. And for the rest: report it. Only presenting negative things is about as useful as only presenting positive things. But it feels more journalistic, "speaking truth to power" and all that. It's not, negativity just sells better.
It reminds me of Paul Graham's old essay on PR firms, which unintentionally(?) contained the best advertisement for the NYT I've ever read.
> At the other extreme are publications like the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. Their reporters do go out and find their own stories, at least some of the time. They'll listen to PR firms, but briefly and skeptically. We managed to get press hits in almost every publication we wanted, but we never managed to crack the print edition of the Times.
It's not like Future.com was ever going to write a piece about an AH company that is bad.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/andreessen-horowitz-went-all-in...
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/15/business/dealbook/adam-ne...
https://fortune.com/crypto/2022/11/30/andreessen-horowitz-do...
[1] https://www.semafor.com/article/11/16/2022/andreessen-passed...
But still the 15x is surprising to me, then again if its based on last years mark to market it makes sense.
Fairly certain all their investments in crypto are going to zero though.
"New A16Z: Securities Fraud as a Business
• Invest in several "blockchain" startups
• Startups issue new tokens promising something, eventually
• These are unlicensed securities and this is blatantly illegal in the US, just not enforced by the SEC!
• A16Z gets a ton of these tokens, sells to retail suckers
• Ideally gets listed on Coinbase, but sketchier exchanges will do • They did that just now with "APE" token!
• If SEC ever wakes up...
• It is the startups that committed the securities fraud, not A16Z! So they are safe with their money!
"
Link: https://su22.cs161.org/assets/lectures/cryptocurrency.pdf
We now know that outright market manipulation at a massive scale was happening through ftx, there is minimal reason btc can’t fall back to 2013 levels with such schemes out of the picture.
https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1679788/000162828021...
Since Coinbase is a publicly traded company and under the SEC, it is actually the exchange we probably have the best and most accurate info on.
https://techcrunch.com/2021/06/15/andreessen-horowitz-goes-i...
June 15, 2021 was a nice time to start thinking about restructuring your portfolio.
Conversely I think now is a good time to think the other way. The European Central Bank is publishing papers about how Bitcoin failed. No one wants to invest in anything risky and wants to only buy T-bills. The Nasdaq is down 28.3% YTD. The FED has admitted they need to slow rate hikes. Putin is 70 and has pancreatic cancer and Parkinson’s, in addition to many in his own country wanting him dead. No market condition lasts forever.
I'd definitely love to see a source for that that's half credible. I've seen enough reports of bad health and impending death for many famous people for many years to take few of them seriously without a decent source or good evidence. This applies especially when it's someone that lots of people would love to see fall off the world stage as soon as possible. Wishful thinking turned speculation and all that..
This seems to be a good summary. Of course it is always going to be tough to know the truth about the health of such a public figure. For me it is enough to believe something is definitely amiss, but maybe I’m more optimistic than most.
I'd argue they are actually a media company, who makes investments in what they want to promote.
They realized that buy having strong promotion that increases the perceived value of their people, companies and founders. It also makes getting LPs easier.
Look to Elon for a core example of this phenom.
Arguing if they are a media company or a VC is irrelevant - it serves the same purpose.
That said that if there was an audience for their efforts still functionally valuable for the time spent on platform.
A16Z is more direct.
A16Z made investments directly in actual media outlets like BuzzFeed, ProductHunt, Future.com, etc.
It sounds like those were the last few months when the publication was still running. I wonder if they simply struggled to find people to write?
[1] https://twitter.com/GergelyOrosz/status/1598666595274051586
I sure wish I had paid more attention to that flyer for the fledgling Electronic Arts :-)
Gaming companies have fame to exploit coders though, probably EA stock makes it worth it if you were in it tho
I'm honestly not sure what the basis was when this was posted.
You may not owe wealthy men better, but you owe this community better if you're participating in it. The issue is what this sort of bile does to us, in our own community.
Omg. Then what isn’t exploitative?! There’s always a bit of a selfish motive in developing partnerships or friendships even.
This is next level victimization.
You never know what people's intent is, and you should assume the best until proven otherwise, but like you say, a spade is a spade, and being nice is useful to the people being nice.
I say this as someone who sees nothing wrong with cranking out 60+ hour weeks if that's your thing.
It's a big club, and you ain't in it.
What is unusual however are those who are consistently sleazy.
Nobody intelligent spends their time hanging out or working with likely backstabbers, if they have any other choice.
Which is why I feel confident in my assertion, even though I haven't personally inspected every private club and office in the region.
Meta point: isn't it bizarre that people are so eager to draw conclusions without any underlying evidence?
Would it be admissible as evidence of Russian war crimes in the Ukraine war for example? Evidence of ear crimes put up on social media, taken down because they violate terms of service, but still preserved in a way that validates they're legitimate.
https://help.archive.org/help/how-do-i-request-to-remove-som...
So, opinions alert:
Truth is not a balance sheet. It is not a mathematical object, in its entirety.
Authorities will always be necessary. This will require social trust.
Social trust is the natural byproduct of healthy societies and its erosion a leading indicator of subsequent demise.
I'd think the first is a mathematical/cryptographically solvable problem, assuming you trust (human decision) whatever hardware/software generates the content. The 2nd is solvable in a decentralized way when the first is solved. and the latter is probably always a human/societal decision.
But why does the need for social trust impact technological solutions to the first two? Especially when deep fakes become more and more relevant in society.
Truth, authority, trust. (3)
The first is not mathematical. Any device that relies on mathematics at its core will fail to meet the demand of "is this true?" (Yes it can sign, authenticate, and verify (and store) sequences of 0s and 1s.)
The second is a social phenomena by definition. Authority affects the suspension of disbelief. That is [one of] its primary function. At best technology can stake a claim to subordinate qualities of reliability of function, and fidelity to specifications. This tech is certified implementation of such and such wonderful design. It's an 'authoritative' realization. There is the limit for authority of technology.
Finally, trust.
Picture this trial in an imaginary 'hate hour' type of country. The defendant is a political prisoner.
"Your honor, these facts have been established mathematically. Unequivocally, these messages were sent and signed by the defendant. This is a proven fact."
"Your honor, they put a gun to my client's privates and had him sign that message which he didn't even write with his keys."
So on to trust. Continue imagining that you are a "red-pilled" citizen of that society watching it on the tubes. Now try being blue-pilled and repeat the exercise. What technology will rid us of these pesky colored pills?
--
We should not waste resources on solutions that can not even theoretically address the critical issues around (perceived) truth, authority, and trust, since these are ultimately and fundamentally human social issues.
Beyond costs-benefits considerations, a secondary ill effect of the blockchain madness here is obfuscating the matter just discussed and creating a pervasive errant thought in a portion of the lay public that technology has obviated the need for authority and trust on certain matters, contrary to the actual state of affairs.
p.s. technology should only be pervasively adopted to improve the human condition.
Is it news? Dunno. Hopefully the world is a little better off with one less dripping teat of commercial bullshit.
“Let’s make a ‘newspaper’ about how good and clever we are at business!” sounds like something you’d hear somebody say after seeing them snort a massive line of adderall.
What’s next? “Let’s start a newspaper about how enormous my dick is and my completely real ability to do a standing backflip!”