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The limiting factor is the bandwidth of the people making the investment decisions. There's no way to manage a portfolio of that size and dedicate the amount of

by IBM 9y ago

The limiting factor is the bandwidth of the people making the investment decisions. There's no way to manage a portfolio of that size and dedicate the amount of time you'd want to any one of them. Also, why give $1 million to 4000 startups when you can put more wood behind the arrow of your best ideas? The point of active management is to generate alpha, doing so requires superior analysis or some other "edge".

AnimalMuppet 9y ago
How do you know what your "best ideas" are? And, are they better than the average of those 4000 startups? Are they better than the top 1% of those 4000 startups? It's not clear to me that, starting from here, NVidia is going to be a fast-growth company - especially not compared to a group of startups.
- outside1234 9y ago
  its possible they are using NVidia as a proxy for a bet on Machine Learning.
- clarky07 9y ago
  This is a bet on AI and machine learning. Not video games. NVidia is currently the publicly traded company that best fits that narrative. If you think it will get big, this is the company you buy.
chii 9y ago
> the bandwidth of the people making the investment decisions why do they need to make any decision at all - if it's like lottery, why not invest in all 4000, let it run wild? The survivors after their money runs out are the good ones.
- noway421 9y ago
  Presumably bad ROI
  - aianus 9y ago
    That's a big presumption isn't it? It was accepted wisdom that you had to pick individual stocks until Vanguard popularized the index fund and now it's accepted wisdom to do the opposite.
    - noway421 9y ago
      It's one thing to pick up stocks of market leaders (which may or may not be having a good time this year around) and another thing is to pick stock of noname startups from the bottom of the pile. Far more risk. There's a reason early stage VCs do dd, it's to weed out complete garbage which wouldn't ever possibly do any return. Probably it is not worth scaling that and easier and more measurable to just stick such big amounts of money into later stages.

by IBM 9y ago

AnimalMuppet 9y ago

How do you know what your "best ideas" are? And, are they better than the average of those 4000 startups? Are they better than the top 1% of those 4000 startups? It's not clear to me that, starting from here, NVidia is going to be a fast-growth company - especially not compared to a group of startups.

outside1234 9y ago
its possible they are using NVidia as a proxy for a bet on Machine Learning.
clarky07 9y ago
This is a bet on AI and machine learning. Not video games. NVidia is currently the publicly traded company that best fits that narrative. If you think it will get big, this is the company you buy.

chii 9y ago

> the bandwidth of the people making the investment decisions why do they need to make any decision at all - if it's like lottery, why not invest in all 4000, let it run wild? The survivors after their money runs out are the good ones.

noway421 9y ago
Presumably bad ROI
- aianus 9y ago
  That's a big presumption isn't it? It was accepted wisdom that you had to pick individual stocks until Vanguard popularized the index fund and now it's accepted wisdom to do the opposite.
  - noway421 9y ago
    It's one thing to pick up stocks of market leaders (which may or may not be having a good time this year around) and another thing is to pick stock of noname startups from the bottom of the pile. Far more risk. There's a reason early stage VCs do dd, it's to weed out complete garbage which wouldn't ever possibly do any return. Probably it is not worth scaling that and easier and more measurable to just stick such big amounts of money into later stages.