3 ms·

Maybe I live in a bubble, but IMHO investment statistics shouldn't be divided in only male and female. I'd also be interested in: - country of origin (e.g. imm

Maybe I live in a bubble, but IMHO investment statistics shouldn't be divided in only male and female. I'd also be interested in: - country of origin (e.g. immigrants, I'd imagine a lot of them to be Indian or first or second generation immigrants of some sort) - Domain/Field - Applications/vs. accepted investments. I think the ratio might be a lot more important than the actual number of investments. Tracking half that information is probably illegal in the US. Another thing that rubs me the wrong way is the use of the word Mafia. I think clique is the right word. Sure, I would like to be a part of that club as well and yeah I'm jealous as well, but calling people that profited from a tech boom they actively participated in a criminal organization is a bit of a stretch. - a hierarchically structured secret organization allegedly engaged in smuggling, racketeering, trafficking in narcotics, and other criminal activities in the U.S., Italy, and elsewhere. (in Sicily) - ( lowercase )a popular spirit of hostility to legal restraint and to the law, often manifesting itself in criminal acts. - a 19th-century secret society, similar to the Camorra in Naples, that acted in this spirit. - ( often lowercase ) any small powerful or influential group in an organization or field; clique.

pluma 8y ago
The article indicates that this is what the group is already known as, it didn't come up with the term. That said, "a popular spirit of hostility to legal restraint and to the law" sounds indistinguishable from how AirBnB, Uber & co operate.
- rjzzleep 8y ago
  I don't disagree and to be honest Uber did actually operate like a Mafia. Although I don't know if that's still the case. Rarely do we read it being labeled that way however. And while the group is called PayPal Mafia, the article specifically keeps using that term over and over. Besides the 5 times PayPal Mafia has been used in the article in compound there is a total 24 times the Mafia word has been used alone. That's a very clear framing of the article and most paragraphs contain it at least once.
  - Nasrudith 8y ago
    While I won't deny that Uber has a tendency to be scofflaws and engage in dubious business practices it stinks of hyperbole unless there were cases of extortion and outright murder we don't know about (even if they were negligent in self-driving car deaths that doesn't qualify). The article certainly feels like the editorial stance in the Daily Bugle towards Spiderman given how they grasp so hard at a mere 2% difference and the guilt by association.
    - mschuster91 8y ago
      > unless there were cases of extortion and outright murder we don't know about You don't need violence to run a Mafia. Makes things easier, yeah, but open violence primarily attracts cops. On corporate scale, there are far more attractive and especially legal things available: use price dumping backed by cheap VC cash to force your competitors to either match or close down (which is the entire business model of Uber), buy up competitors before they get dangerous and/or copy popular ideas from them (just watch what FB did to Instagram and Whatsapp, and how it then used that mass to strangle Snapchat), prevent key employees from switching companies (which they all did via NDAs or secret agreements), buy up key suppliers or lock them into exclusive agreements (sort of what Tesla is attempting to do with the Gigafactory), force restaurant operators to pay with cash to have fraudulent "user reviews" removed, ...

pluma 8y ago

The article indicates that this is what the group is already known as, it didn't come up with the term. That said, "a popular spirit of hostility to legal restraint and to the law" sounds indistinguishable from how AirBnB, Uber & co operate.

rjzzleep 8y ago
I don't disagree and to be honest Uber did actually operate like a Mafia. Although I don't know if that's still the case. Rarely do we read it being labeled that way however. And while the group is called PayPal Mafia, the article specifically keeps using that term over and over. Besides the 5 times PayPal Mafia has been used in the article in compound there is a total 24 times the Mafia word has been used alone. That's a very clear framing of the article and most paragraphs contain it at least once.
- Nasrudith 8y ago
  While I won't deny that Uber has a tendency to be scofflaws and engage in dubious business practices it stinks of hyperbole unless there were cases of extortion and outright murder we don't know about (even if they were negligent in self-driving car deaths that doesn't qualify). The article certainly feels like the editorial stance in the Daily Bugle towards Spiderman given how they grasp so hard at a mere 2% difference and the guilt by association.
  - mschuster91 8y ago
    > unless there were cases of extortion and outright murder we don't know about You don't need violence to run a Mafia. Makes things easier, yeah, but open violence primarily attracts cops. On corporate scale, there are far more attractive and especially legal things available: use price dumping backed by cheap VC cash to force your competitors to either match or close down (which is the entire business model of Uber), buy up competitors before they get dangerous and/or copy popular ideas from them (just watch what FB did to Instagram and Whatsapp, and how it then used that mass to strangle Snapchat), prevent key employees from switching companies (which they all did via NDAs or secret agreements), buy up key suppliers or lock them into exclusive agreements (sort of what Tesla is attempting to do with the Gigafactory), force restaurant operators to pay with cash to have fraudulent "user reviews" removed, ...