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Your faith in Google and Alibaba's judgment is weird to me. Google squandered a lot more than $500 million on terrible projects in the past (Glass and Plus for
by ebbv 10y ago
Your faith in Google and Alibaba's judgment is weird to me. Google squandered a lot more than $500 million on terrible projects in the past (Glass and Plus for example.) I see no reason to think Alibaba is run by infallible geniuses either.
They may indeed have had a very slick demo. That doesn't mean the tech is anything special. That story has happened many times.
There's also no such thing as too big to fail.
People made all the same points you're making about Theranos.
- ryandamm 10y agoYou're right that I'm assuming there's a thorough DD process associated with those investments. It's possible ML just showed them smoke and mirrors, too. But I don't think so (partially because I've spoken with people who've seen the demo -- they're under airtight NDA, but they're clearly not skeptical of the company). After some introspection about why I think this way, perhaps it's the sum of money that makes it seem less risky... and but it could be an artifact of scale: most investments of that size are growth capital or PE. Instead, we're seeing risk capital assigned to a potentially enormous market, so it's scaled up, too. Almost like the world's biggest seed funding? (Take that, Clinkle!)