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Scooter startup Bird is seeking a $2B valuation
- scottmcleod 8y agoI came here just to leave a lol
- iseff 8y agoThere's almost no clearer indication that the speed of business is quickening at an amazing pace. In the scooter world, the land grab is on, and everyone is looking at ride sharing as the obvious analog, which means raise a lot of money, expand to new cities, and earn market share... quickly. Whether a couple (or all) of these companies flame out remains to be seen, and is probably likely. But there's also likely to be a winner in this category. And the winner is likely to be worth a lot of money. These companies likely don't "deserve" their valuations based on current metrics like revenue, but the market potential is huge, the growth is high, and the capital requirements are large... so investors seem more than willing to make bets.
- Karrot_Kream 8y agoThat's what both Lyft and Uber thought, but instead the market has withstood two vigorous competitors, alongside strong regional competitors such as Ola, Careem, and Didi. Though margins are much higher with scooters.
- ealexhudson 8y agoI genuinely don't understand this. They can't realistically need the money, since they just raised. There's no fundamental change to their numbers or outlook in a month. There's been no obvious regulatory relaxation to take advantage of. Even if I buy the "Uber might buy us" thesis, surely it's better value for me as an existing investor to get a bigger portion of a slightly smaller check, than try to fix in an astronomical valuation by bailing more cash into the business? I really don't get the sense in this move at all.
- monocasa 8y agoThey've gotten significantly more press outside of San Fran in the past month.
- ealexhudson 8y agoSure, and if they manage to fix a valuation of $1.5B or even $2B, it will drive a lot more press. Are they then going to go out in July and hoover up a bunch more cash? I understand that when a capital-intensive business sees an opportunity to grab some cash, it can make a lot of sense. There's more constraints than the scooters for them - finding the right locations, setting up bird squads, ensuring there's a kind of natural circle of travel rather than a tide of commuting. And, of course, marketing all of that at the right time. Some of that $$$ can solve, but it doesn't feel like they're at the point they can just step on the gas.
- usrusr 8y ago> They can't realistically need the money, since they just raised. Keep that very same money from getting showered on a competitor? If a large chunk of money is looking for a foot on the ground in your market, opening your hands and taking it might be the only way to survive.
- wpietri 8y agoI'm not sure this is a sign that the speed of business is really quickening all that much. VC-funded bubbles provide a local acceleration in business speed, but they also drastically increase risks and systemic waste. It's also not clear to me that there will be "a winner" once the VC money runs out. There's no "a winner" in the convenience store market, for example. A study lists 202 viable convenience store chains, the smallest has over 30 stores. [1] And that ignores the many one-off chains, and some of the places like Walgreens and CVS that clearly substitute for convenience stores for many. [1] http://www.cspdailynews.com/industry-news-analysis/top-convenience-stores-2017 http://www.cspdailynews.com/industry-news-analysis/top-conve...
- alex_young 8y agoThis sounds exactly like the ridesharing model. Drown the market in money, kill off your competitors by undercutting on price, then jack up prices to make a business. The problem, like ridesharing, is once you start raising prices, you just lost all of your customers to a new competitor that hasn't spent all of their money. I don't see how this model can possibly work. The barrier to switching is almost 0 to the user - you can already see that by looking at the Uber & Lyft tags on every car you get in. Installing another app isn't as hard as swapping insurance providers or mobile platforms.
- nugget 8y ago>then jack up prices to make a business Of course this hasn't happened in the rideshare market yet - it's cheaper than ever before. I've found Uber Express prices to be almost unbelievably cheap recently. Seems like there's at least some non-zero chance that these prices remain low until autonomous vehicles make them permanent and sustainable.
- ebikelaw 8y agoUberX prices have done nothing but increase in San Francisco for years. The minimum fare went from $5 to $7, the service fee from $1.35 to $2.20, etc.
- baybal2 8y ago>The problem, like ridesharing, is once you start raising prices And once you start raising prices, Aima and Niu waltz in and sell scooters for a price cheaper than a single ride
- visarga 8y agoI wouldn't want to use a GPS tracked scooter. The company might sell my location data or get hacked. Better to buy a non-GPS tracked scooter of my own.
- jonknee 8y agoBetter leave your phone at home while you're on a personal scooter then.
- ss2003 8y agoor just off its gps.
- jonknee 8y agoYour phone is constantly tracked by the cell towers it communicates with and in urban areas that's quite accurate location data. This data is sold to third parties. https://krebsonsecurity.com/2018/05/tracking-firm-locationsmart-leaked-location-data-for-customers-of-all-major-u-s-mobile-carriers-in-real-time-via-its-web-site/ https://krebsonsecurity.com/2018/05/tracking-firm-locationsm...
- cfadvan 8y agoI can put my phone in a Faraday sleeve, not so easy for a scooter.
- qaq 8y agoThere are a number of chips in the phone running their own OSes that you have no control over.
- microdrum 8y agoI hate to say it but the only actual winner is the manufacturer, Xiaomi.
- anamoulous 8y agoDean Kamen must be sitting out on his private island asking himself "WTF???".
- RandallBrown 8y agoWow, the Segway Minilite is only $300. https://www.amazon.com/Segway-miniLITE-Balancing-Transporter-Integrated/dp/B074CYX5PT/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1513714136&sr=8-3&keywords=segway+miniLITE https://www.amazon.com/Segway-miniLITE-Balancing-Transporter... Fill the sidewalks with these and you could have your own startup!
- burkaman 8y ago> 11 Mile Range | 10 mph Scooters go faster and have at least twice that range, I think.
- TomK32 8y agodoh, i'm over the max payload.
- komali2 8y ago220lbs is a surprisingly low payload... Depending on height it's not at all difficult for even a healthy person to be that weight, let alone someone that lifts or is a bit chubby. I wonder what kind of wiggle room there is?
- usaphp 8y agoHmm, I don’t know a lot of healthy people who weight over 220 lbs.
- xyzzy_plugh 8y agoI have plenty of athletic friends who are at least 6 feet tall and weigh more than 220.
- ggg9990 8y agoWhat’s the moat for a company like this? Seems like nearly no network effect.
- cspags 8y agoHuman behavior maybe? I know it's almost no effort to install a new app, but Ofo and Lime were the first rideshare bikes in my town and since there are plenty of their bikes around I haven't bothered to install any of their newer competitors' apps.
- dpiers 8y agoThey have a network of independent contractors (regular people) that collect scooters off the street at night, charge them, and reposition/place them in the morning. The companies that win in the dockless electric space will be the ones that can most efficiently externalize these costs, not the ones who arrive first or buy the most scooters.
- _lex 8y agoPossible moats: 1. the cost of having and maintaining a fleet of scooters 2. the network of flexible staff charging scooters 3. proprietary battery packs 4. the network of flexible staff moving the scooters to better locations 5. exclusive access to a scooter with a performance profile that the rest of the market cannot match (think tesla). x. contractual moat 1) will not stop startups with access to funding from entering the market. Providing service will require a fleet of these lite EVs and as the economics becomes obvious, the companies will merge (so they share overhead costs) until there are only one or two fleets. 2) Is very short term, because eventually the companies will figure out that they can get their users to charge the scooters themselves - by literally bringing their own battery pack (it's pretty portable - see https://electricscooterparts.com/batteries.html https://electricscooterparts.com/batteries.html) to the scooter and plugging their battery in. The scooters will validate the powersource to ensure it's safe and that will be the end of the "paying random people to charge scooters" business. 3) They can't even charge for proprietary battery packs and use that sunk cost as a moat, because with VC money, competitors will just give away their own proprietary battery packs. Maybe the switching cost will be the time it takes to receive your free battery pack in the mail, but you'd just order a free one from each competitor in your area, so this is an insignificant moat. 4) Is also relatively short term: They will also eventually tell users where they are allowed to leave the scooters, and charge people who don't comply. They may frame it as a discount, but.... In the end the hard work will be outsourced to customers, which means there will really not be lock in. Any leftover work will eventually be done by professionals, or maybe by a smaller network of people moving scooters, if they are cheaper. 5) This is the best moat, but it's similar to the moat iphone used to have. They will need patents and to basically be on the forefront of the industry, forever. Boosted Boards is likely to wind up occupying this position, though they are likely to not directly operate their scooter rental product, but instead sell the scooters in an exclusive agreement to a particular company that turns around and wins the market with lower costs and higher reliability. Boosted would use their monopoly position to extract as much profit from that partner as is possible while allowing the partner to still be cheaper than getting and maintaining other scooters. Eventually their partner will try to clone their product and get it cheaper elsewhere, unless Boosted's patent game is very strong. x) I think there's another possible moat. A particular service provider may be able to force users to agree that they only use their own boards in order to have access to lower marginal cost. Users may get a discount for not having the competitor's app on their phone. Alternatively, a provider might allow users to buy like $500 credit up front for a significant discount to achieve similar impact.
- philip1209 8y agoLet's see if Softbank chooses a winner in the scooter market - I wouldn't be surprised if they came in with a ~$500M investment in Bird or one of its competitors.
- theNJR 8y agoMy thoughts exactly.
- gordon_freeman 8y agoor both.
- philip1209 8y agoI'm no expert, but - from what I've read - Softbank comes in and offers the dominant player a huge amount of money for a bigger chunk of equity than you were expecting to give up. It scares away all of the other investors, who withdraw their offers and leave Softbank as the only offer. If you turn down Softbank, they go to your biggest competitor and make basically the same offer. That amount of cash doesn't guarantee a winner, but it gives one company room for a lot more mistakes, and no other VC will back other players with the same amount of cash. So, back to your comment - "or both" - my interpretation is that Softbank wants to create an uneven playing field. Whereas, at the seed level, it's ok to spray and pray because expected returns are so much greater.
- sschueller 8y agoWith these startups it seems the only barrier to entry is money. Who ever can raise more can buy more scooters. Risky however if cities ban them and/or roll out their own.
- visarga 8y agoThat would be myopic - scooters are more city friendly - almost zero pollution and waste less energy. Instead they should expand the bike lanes everywhere. One serious advantage of scooters over bikes is that you don't arrive full of sweat at your destination.
- Symbiote 8y agoIf you're adding a motor to the scooter, you may as well add one to the bicycle and have better handling and a higher speed.
- joeblau 8y agoThat's effectively what Jump Bikes are. I took one last week in SF and they go about 30 miles an hour with very little effort. They aren't fully electric though, just electric assist.
- dazhbog 8y agoI wonder how much they are buying those scooters from Xiaomi.
- supahfly_remix 8y agome too. On ebay, a m365 costs about $500 and takes a month to arrive.
- microdrum 8y agoOnly because the vc money is buying all this Chinese scrap metal! Price in bulk via PO is $225.
- cobookman 8y agoI was quoted <250 per including shipping for a bulk order
- alasdair_ 8y agoIn the spirit of dumping potentially dangerous clutter on the streets and leaving it up to the cities to pay for the cleanup, I'm now taking seed money for my "handgun as a service" business. I'm going to blanket key areas with handguns that you can unlock with an GPS-enabled app. Once you're done using them ($1 per minute and $20 per-bullet, with "surge" pricing in active-shooter situations), just leave them anywhere in the city for the next user/child to stumble across. Anyone want to fund me?
- randyrand 8y agoHow about a nuclear bomb rental service? dockless nuclear bombs. Surely that's an even better comparison! /s
- tantalor 8y agoThe Onion was there first, https://www.theonion.com/chicago-introduces-new-citywide-gun-sharing-stations-1819577357 https://www.theonion.com/chicago-introduces-new-citywide-gun... Also appeared as an art piece, http://wgntv.com/2018/05/11/gun-share-public-art-exhibit-front-and-center-in-daley-plaza/ http://wgntv.com/2018/05/11/gun-share-public-art-exhibit-fro...
- patall 8y agoExactly. I am also super annoyed by all the cheap shared bikes that now clutter our city and are very often parked in the middle of the pedestrian path. Same for shared cars that more often than not are parked in a non parking zone so that people with a baby buggy (or in a wheel chair) have to walk on the street to get around. Share economy would be nice if people would not treat everything like rubbish that they don't own.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- jlebar 8y ago> In the spirit of dumping potentially dangerous clutter on the streets and leaving it up to the cities to pay for the cleanup ... In the same spirit, I was thinking of starting a car rental service. :)
- bjourne 8y agoI don't get it. If scooters are so great, then why doesn't everyone just buy their own? Seem much simpler than checking them in and out of special built bike racks.
- seattle_spring 8y agoThey're dockless.
- j9d 8y agoThis is really bad logic. This is the same thing as saying, "If cars are really that great, then why doesn't everyone buy their own? Seems much simpler than using Lyft"
- visarga 8y agoAlmost everyone does, though.
- CydeWeys 8y agoMost people where I live (Manhattan) do not own their own car. We don't all live in the suburbs. And the scooter rentals are clearly targeting cities, not suburbs.
- alasdair_ 8y ago>Almost everyone does, though. Not in London (or, indeed, much of the UK). Not in Manhattan. Not any city where parking can take 20 minutes to find and costs $30+ a day.
- toomuchtodo 8y ago17 million cars a year are still sold in the US, so clearly ridesharing isn’t preferred that much more over vehicle ownership (perhaps if you’re in a city and without kids). Having two kids, I couldn’t imagine dragging two car seats with us Lyft to Lyft. Rather just own the car.
- 8y ago
- Tiktaalik 8y agoNA cities have never built high quality separated bike lane infrastructure to make it all that safe to ride a bike or scooter on the road. What happens when someone riding one of these gets killed by a driver?
- fleitz 8y agoThey let their insurance policy deal with it?
- godzillabrennus 8y agoThe same thing that happens in any accident. The parties involved find a settlement or go to court for a judgement. In such matters it would be naive and a breach of fiduciary duty of Bird’s Team not to have insurance to cover those matters.
- protonimitate 8y agoSame thing that happens now when bikers get killed - brief outrage, a meager attempt to 'improve biker infrastructure' and then..nothing. If Bird has already achieved a $2B valuation, it will take massive amounts of user deaths to warrant any change in that valuation.
- stevenwoo 8y agoThere are rarely reprecussions for a driver hitting/killing a single cyclist, without video evidence or multiple corroborating witnesses/victims, typically law enforcement pre emptively blames the cyclist so one would expect the same thing for scooter riders. An old editorial about this attitude: https://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/10/opinion/sunday/is-it-ok-to-kill-cyclists.html https://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/10/opinion/sunday/is-it-ok-t...
- notatoad 8y agoOdds are, the scooter rider won't be wearing a helmet. And in cyclist / motor vehicle collisions, that's usually enough to make it the cyclist's fault.
- cbhl 8y agoBikes are in a no-mans land because of speed differences -- they're too slow to go on the road, and too fast to safely mix with pedestrians on sidewalks. I personally prefer dockless bikes over scooters, but I will admit that scooters are safer because of their lower top speed. This makes it reasonable to mix scooters with pedestrian traffic provided that the sidewalk is wide enough. The key to making bike/scooter-sharing work is to make the infrastructure cheap, incremental, and easy. Google ran into the same problems with GBikes blocking ADA ramps and front doors that cities are seeing with scooters. One big thing that helped was converting a few parking spaces into bike parking (literally just green paint and a few signs), and putting friendly "don't block ADA parking or ramps" signs up. If you want to prevent "deaths from drivers", the highest impact thing would be to work on self-driving cars (join the great engineers at Waymo, Cruise, or even Uber).
- vlucas 8y agoFrom the article: > This would be just weeks after it raised $150 million at a $1 billion valuation, and only three months after raising at a $300 million valuation. Venture capitalists have never before participated in such a rapid and rocketing price spike.
- koverda 8y agoThat's an insanely fast rise in valuation.
- DeonPenny 8y agoUndervalued 100%
- koverda 8y agowhat makes you say that?
- thisisit 8y agoThere has been sudden glut of articles about scooter startups here on HN and elsewhere. And I am scratching my head trying to understand what exactly is the end game plan here? If self driving cars and Uber etc succeed then all commuting will be through cars, how will these scooters fit in that picture?
- NullPrefix 8y agoAll the eggs in one basket.
- ceejayoz 8y agoYou-drive cars haven't replaced you-drive scooters. Why would self-drive cars replace them? Sometimes you want to be out in the fresh air, they're cheaper than a car to rent/maintain, and they can get places cars can't.
- aboodman 8y ago1/ I think people assume that self-driving cars will "succeed" in a binary sense. I do not think that is how it plays out. I think there is a long, slow process of self-driving cars working a little better in a little more places. In busy, urban centers, self-driving cars are going to be a long time coming. 2/ No matter how self-driving the car, in busy environments, scooters are going to get you from a) to b) faster.
- joejerryronnie 8y agoYou are correct, sir! Re: the non-binary, long slog to some type of self driving vehicle - I think we're already starting to see this realization sink in with the actual engineers, leaders, and investors in this space.
- hunter23 8y agodo you really want to wait for a self driving uber for a 0.4 commute through traffic clogged streets during rush hour? Cars aren't one size fit all solutions for all your transportation; the point of the scooters are to serve as last mile transport.
- cabaalis 8y agoThey hit a big setback here in Nashville. People are leaving these things all over the place. The city is looking to regulate these types of devices. Please, Bird, don't pull another Uber. This is not an existing market to be disrupted. Work with the municipalities to get a working framework in place so we will all be better off.
- wpietri 8y agoAs far as I can tell, it is exactly the Uber "I do what I want and fuck you" model. It's really disheartening to see startups still cargo culting that. I honestly didn't have a big issue with powered scooters until they turned into VC-funded litter all over my city. They were clearly in the category of "experimental vehicle", like e-bikes, the tourist GoCar things, Segways, and whatever those one-wheeled feet-wrapping things are called. They were small in number, their users were responsible participants in traffic, and it was interesting to see where they went to. And I'm a big fan of the Go Bike bike sharing program, which worked closely with the city to integrate well into the urban environment. But suddenly, a few different startups seemed to believe that they could turn the sidewalks into their place of business, turning a lot of untrained goofs loose with a powered vehicle. Even if I were chill about the probably-illegal taking of public space for private profit (and I'm not), the sudden rise in dangerous idiots on the streets is a big deal for me. Now my general feeling with these clowns is "Oh, fuck me? No, fuck you." I'm generally very pro-entrepreneur, but if my city bans these clowns, I will shed no tears. Let them serve as a warning to future overly entitled entrepreneurs.
- dsfyu404ed 8y ago> I'm generally very pro-entrepreneur, but if my city bans these clowns, I will shed no tears. Let them serve as a warning to future overly entitled entrepreneurs. Whoever comes up with a solution that puts both business that externalize their costs and governments with a penchant for heavy handed regulation on the losing side will get my vote.
- wpietri 8y ago
- lpolovets 8y agoAs an investor who has looked at this space a little bit + talked to other investors who have backed some of these companies, it seems like: - the economics of scooters are great (very quick payback periods for the scooters). At a few bucks per ride and maybe a dozen rides per day, it doesn't take that long to pay off a $300 or $500 scooter. - most people that try scooters seem to really enjoy riding them. - an individual scooter doesn't last super long and needs to be serviced a lot and then replaced. As an investor, the main thing I'm stuck on is what the moats could be in this business. Brand is a potential moat, but the two biggest companies in this space already have good brands so that's not helpful for me as a seed investor. And I'm not sure if brand would be enough for people to walk an extra block or two if there are closer scooters nearby. People talk about network effects, but I am skeptical. First those network effects are local. Second, it doesn't take that much money to blanket a city with scooters and break the network effect. My napkin math for SF is that it would cost <$1.5m to put a scooter on every other block (https://twitter.com/lpolovets/status/992503477149450240 https://twitter.com/lpolovets/status/992503477149450240). If that's accurate, then it's not going to be a big barrier against any well-funded company. Maybe one moat could be scooter durability. If your scooters are 2x more rugged, then your margins and economics are a lot better, and you can use the additional profits to outspend your competitors on customer acquisition. We'll probably find out what moats do (or don't) exist here over the next few years.
- pascalxus 8y agoI'm sure government will be providing more than plenty of moats to prevent any new entrants into this market as soon as this industry is developed.
- kenhwang 8y agoSanta Monica is already planning on enacting a sort of moat law that would seemingly protect Bird (conveniently HQed next door in Venice).
- Shivetya 8y agoJust let us get through one winter season. Is anyone trying this in an area other that those with mild weather. Northern cities will have days if not weeks worth of time where the roads won't be safe. plus have any of these startups had issues with injury lawsuits?
- dylanz 8y agoLime just dumped 140 scooters in Santa Barbara and they immediately got impounded. The city is going to charge them a $100 fine for each scooter. I'm assuming that's a drop in the bucket compared to their revenue and the cost of working out adoption specifics with local government.
- sschueller 8y agoCould have avoided that by just asking for permission first.
- tonyedgecombe 8y agoSometimes it’s easier to ask for forgiveness.
- colept 8y agoLoved BIRD when they first started here in San Jose but now they're painfully slow (~12mph) while Lime has managed to keep top speed around 20mph. BIRD has an edge in terms of availability but I find myself taking one to find a Lime.
- gamblor956 8y agoBird slowed down their scooters to maintain battery life and because it was part of the terms of their settlement with Santa Monica. I assume they simply applied that software update fleetwide.
- jondwillis 8y agoBut, seemingly, only the newer ones with the paddles for both the acceleration and braking are limited to 12mph. The old ones still go faster in my limited experience.
- giarc 8y agoMaybe they can't get OTA updates?
- kylec 8y agoI played around with the scooters in San Jose during WWDC last week, and I have to say that I preferred the Bird ones. While the Lime ones did have a faster top speed, they were also slower to accelerate. When driving on the sidewalks there's a lot of slowing down, so getting back up to speed quickly is more important in my opinion. Plus ~12mph is fast enough IMO, it feels dangerous to go much faster than that.
- jessaustin 8y agoWhy are you driving on the sidewalks? Please stop doing that!
- kylec 8y ago
- xiaosun 8y agoAt what point is a scooter considered abandoned property? What's preventing me from just taking the scooter off the street and hoarding them?
- giarc 8y agoDo you just take cars that haven't been driven in a week? Why would a scooter be any different?
- woolvalley 8y agoMostly because a car is too heavy :p
- joeblau 8y agoI read a story a few weeks ago where people were actually taking the scooters. Then they would be marked as stolen, and the people would return them and collect the lost & found fee.
- microdrum 8y agoThese scooter businesses are like studies in ways to lose money! Another one is: what happens when at scale the Chinese manufacturers can get these things into LA and NY for $200 direct to consumer, not $500? Most business do better when inputs get cheaper. But Lime will just see demand evaporate as people buy their own little scooters.
- newest_user_ 8y agoI believe property is considered to be abandoned after not being able to contact the owner for three years or so.
- arosier 8y agoAfter 160 hours spent operating as a "charger" in SF, for both Bird and Lime, this space is interesting. Here's my "back of the napkin math": $300 - vehicle cost (based on alibaba Xiaomi m365 estimates) $8 - average fare (unknown) 3 - rides per day (based on 90k rides in the first 30 days) $12 - daily cost of charging per vehicle 1% - daily fleet loss (might be closer to 2%) 1% - daily maintenance required (might be closer to 2%) After 100 days: 0 vehicles remaining Current return on capital: -8% Dynamic areas of the unit economics: - Increase number of fares per vehicle (increased battery life) - Increased average fare (increase pricing) - Decrease vehicle charging cost (current rate could be cut by about 65% to maintain competitive hourly compensation for type of work) - Decrease loss rate by implementing some sort of lock- tethering system
- maxk42 8y agoI don't know about the accuracy of your numbers, but the fleet loss at least is wrong. 1% daily fleet loss would leave 36 - 37 vehicles remaining after 100 days.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- taytus 8y agoDay 1->99% Day 2->98% Day 3->97% Day 100->0%
- olasaustralia 8y agoThat's not how it works. (1-1%)^100=37%
- habosa 8y agoAverage fare is much more like ~$3
- shahbaby 8y agoAs a frequent Uber user who just purchased an ebike, I don't think I would have been interested in a service like this. E-bikes/scooters are no where near as expensive as a car. No insurance or gas payment and the maintenance cost is nothing like that of a car. E-bikes/scooters also don't require a specialized parking space. E-bikes/scooters can be charged from home. These are some of the reasons why owning an E-bike/scooter is much easier than owning a car and therefore fewer people will be interested in a pay-per-use service.
- donpark 8y agoTwo issues worth mentioning IMO: - daily loss rate could escalate as thieves get better & friends join in. - personal injury - you're encouraging people to ride scooter without a helmet.
- TaylorSwift 8y agoHow does one actually invest into these startups? Are there requirements? It doesn't look like google is much help here.
- confounded 8y agoBy being a partner at an established venture capital firm.
- hnisgroupthink 8y agoYou have to be an accredited investor, for your protection. If you aren't in the 1% you join the rest of the disenfranchised masses. Have you considered having more children? Many such men in your position find it a good answer when they've been disenfranchised by authoritarians. It provides escape when realizing how the rich have stole the future and made everyone indentured servants to them. Stochastically killing anyone who doesn't fit their slavery requirements through arcane healthcare controlled by the same authoritarians. Through slavery we find truth. Back to solving problems for rich people for no royalties.