Hacker News Reader

Comment by cyphunk | Hacker News Reader

Reminder Andreessen is the same person that says Snowden is a traitor.

Is this relevant? I don't agree with him about Snowden, but I don't see why his view on a political issue should be related to his view on burn rates. People can be wrong about some things and right about others. Everybody is wrong about some things -- but we cannot write off everything that everybody says, because sometimes people are right.

My statement is entirely irrelevant to this topic but I sacrifice Karma because I think it is important that this person not be able to get away from his statements on Snowden. He entirely ignores policy discussions that may have lead to Snowden, placing all blame on Snowden for the potential impact of the NSA's actions on the wider IT industry. Please feel free to down vote me, it would be the logical conclusion.

Without expressing a position on Marc A's views on Snowden, I look at it a bit like Hollywood celebrities' views on politics. I may (arguably) care what a celeb says about a topic where he/she has demonstrated expertise, such as the craft of acting, but I would not expect them to have special expertise on vaccination, firearm policy, foreign policy, climatography, intelligence agencies, etc.

Similarly, I care quite a bit what Marc A. thinks about VCs and startups and cash burn rates: he's a smart guy with lots of experience who is willing to speak his mind, a rare character trait nowadays. You can appreciate and even applaud that without endorsing his views on the possible legal fate of an ex-government contractor.

As an interesting factoid that may be it is in no way related to the point Andreessen is making. Startups are warming themselves by burning piles of money and a harsh winter is coming.

The harsh winter in which you go back to making $120 K as a software engineer?

In tech winter is not white walkers, it's a week of rain.

So does that discredit everything else he says? He very bullish on the disrupting capabilities of Bitcoin, for example.

What does that have to do with white hot burn rates?

Deleted comment

His firm's investments are the ultimate expression of opinion. So do we now question the validity of those investments? AirBnB, Coinbase, Digital Ocean, etc?

If the only evidence on Marc was the Snowden info, sure, it might mean to discount his statements. But the rest of the information that we have of him as a VC totally outweighs his Snowden views to the point of irrelevancy.

Don't. Just... don't.

Keep it on topic.

Edit: Why on Earth do I get down voted because I think it should be kept on topic??? Really???

You took the bait.

Well, in that context, it makes sense that I would be downvoted!

i upvoted

Reply on news.ycombinator.com