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Also interesting to see how the company ended up. Keep in mind it was started in '99 from the wiki[1]: By January 2003...all of the founders other than Tolia

by ValG 9y ago

Also interesting to see how the company ended up. Keep in mind it was started in '99 from the wiki[1]: By January 2003...all of the founders other than Tolia had left and eventually In January 2005 the four cofounders who had left and other Epinions employee-stockholders filed a lawsuit against Tolia and the two VC firms that provided seed funding. Lots of context missing around these quotes (read the wiki), but there was a lot of conflict (as mentioned in the posted article) between these "bulldogs and execution machines" [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epinions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epinions

theprop 9y ago
Yes, "Partners at two prominent Silicon Valley venture capital firms deceived four of the five founders of a start-up company, withholding critical information and thereby cheating them out of tens of millions of dollars, according to a lawsuit.....The suit named J. William Gurley of Benchmark Capital and John R. Johnston of August Capital, both original investors in Epinions and directors of the company, and an Epinions co-founder, Nirav N. Tolia." http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/26/technology/founders-of-web-site-accuse-backers-of-cheating-them.html http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/26/technology/founders-of-web...
jondubois 9y ago
I don't understand the Silicon Valley philosophy. Why should people be rewarded for being reckless to such extent? It reminds me of a point by Nassim Taleb which claims that if you look at the absolute top securities traders at any given time, they are usually ones who took massive poorly-calculated risks which happened to work out - The best traders in the long run are usually not the most prominent ones. They get smaller rewards over long periods of time but most of them end their careers with a net gain for their clients. Unfortunately, because VCs are themselves reckless, they think that recklessness is a virtue and only invest in it. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. The fact that 9 out of 10 startups fail is merely the result of this attitude that VCs have. They managed to turn this terrible ratio into some kind of industry standard. Maybe it's actually extremely inefficient.

by ValG 9y ago

theprop 9y ago

Yes, "Partners at two prominent Silicon Valley venture capital firms deceived four of the five founders of a start-up company, withholding critical information and thereby cheating them out of tens of millions of dollars, according to a lawsuit.....The suit named J. William Gurley of Benchmark Capital and John R. Johnston of August Capital, both original investors in Epinions and directors of the company, and an Epinions co-founder, Nirav N. Tolia." http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/26/technology/founders-of-web-site-accuse-backers-of-cheating-them.html http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/26/technology/founders-of-web...

jondubois 9y ago

I don't understand the Silicon Valley philosophy. Why should people be rewarded for being reckless to such extent? It reminds me of a point by Nassim Taleb which claims that if you look at the absolute top securities traders at any given time, they are usually ones who took massive poorly-calculated risks which happened to work out - The best traders in the long run are usually not the most prominent ones. They get smaller rewards over long periods of time but most of them end their careers with a net gain for their clients. Unfortunately, because VCs are themselves reckless, they think that recklessness is a virtue and only invest in it. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. The fact that 9 out of 10 startups fail is merely the result of this attitude that VCs have. They managed to turn this terrible ratio into some kind of industry standard. Maybe it's actually extremely inefficient.