Slashdot Mirror
One of Silicon Valley's Most Esteemed VCs Says Startups Are 'Mostly Crap' (vanityfair.com)
An anonymous reader cites an article on VanityFair: Former Facebook employee Chamath Palihapitiya won't pull punches when it comes to lame tech companies. Palihapitiya's firm, Social Capital, has backed numerous tech companies with valuations in the billions, such as Slack, Box, and SurveyMonkey. But that doesn't mean that he is bullish on unicorn culture. He says "Most of those businesses are fundamentally not good, they're poorly run, and they never should have been invested in in the first place. But the capital came in because the person who had control of the capital was able to justify it intellectually to themselves versus something else that could have become the next Facebook or Google. [...] The reality is, great companies can go public in any market. When we talk about the I.P.O. slowdowns what we're really saying is that there really just aren't that many good companies being built. We need to divorce ourselves from venture capital as an occupation and focus on using capital as a way to take really big bets on things that just seem totally audacious. Right now we haven't done enough of that, and the result is that most of the things we've funded are mostly crap and largely worthless."
Then he announced his plans for a revolutionary type of new instant messaging/social dating app?
Racist.
How do you know her as anything but a white blue-eyed blonde Valley girl, except by her annoyingly long and unpronounceable name?
"Racist", right back at'cha!
She's also a dude. From Sri Lanka. You know, a country which speaks fucking Tamil and Sinhala, and doesn't give two shits about what a couple of English-speaking dumbfucks think about how they name their kids.
and no, "get bought by Google!!OMG!!11!!" is not really a practical business plan
You say that, but... ...well, OK before I continue, let's both agree it's not actually a sane plan in a world of reason.
But there's a problem here: this ain't a world of reason. Citiation: I currently have a startup. Frankly it's mental. Esseintally what most people seem to want to see is a vague plan to get some customers and revenue and blah blah blah but not use that to have any sort of growth or anything sensible, it's to use that to sell out to google (or whatever) as soon as possible.
Seriously, the equivalent of "get bought by google lolwtfbbq11!!11!11oneONELEVEN11!" is actually the plan they want to see. The purpose of customers is not to bring in revenue, it's to make you a tempting target for purchase AND THAT IS ALL.
Has anyone done any studies as to what percentage of VC-funded startups actually eke out enough money (somehow) to provide a decent ROI to anyone investing in them?
Studies? Fuck 'em. Internet of things, man, INTERNET OF THINGS THEN GOOGLE WILL BUY IS DO YOU NOT UNDERSTAND IIINNTTEERRNNEETT OOFF TTHHIINNGGSS!!!!
SJW n. One who posts facts.
As an aside, I realize that nebuloud was almost certainly a typo for nebulous, but it's actually a wonderful portmanteau word that describes startups perfectly.
Not only are they nebulous, they're loud in their self-promotion to anyone with two coins to rub together.
Or maybe it's a portmanteau between nebulous and cloud. Just as apt either way.
"But that last one will make so much money that the owner becomes wealthy"
For which they (or their descendants) need to be thoroughly punished by taxation into the ground, because "income inequality".
Signed,
Thomas Piketty
(and his friends)
"the 99%"
-Styopa