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Comment by kbenson | Hacker News Reader

Isn't this exactly what the last week of HBO's series Silicon Valley was about? Not getting valued too high because it may force your hand later?

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The last episode is the opposite, don't make revenues, this way expectations are limitless as opposed to making small revenues

I think that advice is out-of-date now - and in Silicon Valley, the advice was given by "literally the worst person in the world", so I didn't see it as being advice anyone was meant to take seriously.

Not at all. This is probably the one thing they've gotten the most right so far.

It's not unique to tech stocks - it's very deep part of investor psychology.

E.g. in a romantic relationship, people being far more enthusiastic and more willing to invest in a partner with high perceived future potential earning and other value, than in a partner who's already clearly laid out all their cards.

Yes, but the character who gives that advice is very blatantly portrayed as a moron (by the way, does anyone know who are the inspirations for the character?)

It's a thinly veiled Mark Cuban, who sold his radio on the internet startup to Yahoo and has since managed to increase his net worth from 2.5 billion dollars to a whopping 2.7 billion dollars.

To be fair, he also owns a basketball team.

A measly $200,000,000

The 'radio on the internet' bit seems to point to Mark Cuban being at least a partial inspiration.

Exactly. Then you can tell investors you are "pre-revenue"

Somehow, I found that storyline interesting in that such smart people could not grasp such a simple concept on their own.

I think simple concepts can naturally be hard to come up with unless you are thinking in the right context. When someone in that situation should be thinking in the context of what that means to the people they are beholden to, often it's the first time they've been in that situation (or more accurately it's foreign feeling enough that the parallels are missed) and are still seeing it as a metric of their personal worthiness as measured through their creation.

At least, that's my take on it. I don't have any real experience here, so I could be totally off.

Well, sure, if one is distracted or outside the context. But for one of them, that was his job. As for the leader of the group, the example of the problem was right there in front of him and he still didn't grasp it.

The reason I found it interesting is because I could see it actually happening. Of which, I'm sure it has.

When everyone is doing something contrary to your instincts, it can be hard to trust your instincts... I think it's pretty common, actually.

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