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Comment by jacques_chester | Hacker News Reader

Is it possible to short startups? Because I would love an opportunity to short Tim Feris, even if only by proxy.

If there's one thing he knows it's marketing and hype, pretty sure that'd be useful for a startup with a proven business model.

The base rate for all startups, regardless of hype, is not awesome.

its possible. just find a counterparty who wants to take the other side of the bet.

people short unshortable assets in finance all the time by getting the bank or a marketmaker to take the other side in an "over-the-counter" (OTC) agreement.

You just make up the rules and there's a signed document.

i.e. "bets backed up with legal documents".

And... I, for one, would probably take the other side of the bet against Tim Ferris in the short term.

Are we making a bet? Because we'd need to work out some sort of terms.

The nice thing about shorting a stock in the open market is that it's easy to peg it to a fall in price.

For a privately held company it's much harder.

Hard to short a guy with a massive following. He can sell pretty much anything to his loyal fans. And there are a lot of them. You'd be better off shorting Tesla and Elon musk. Take away all their government subsidies and all you're left with is hype.

And a car that seems to have achieved something that others haven't, is licensing its technology to Toyota, and is selling cars that people want and are excited about. Other than that, yes, just hype.

Yeah, I have to be honest I'm not really a buyer of Ferriss. No hard evidence, just not convinced by him.

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