4 ms·

>For some reason, theres this streak on HN of people that think that VC's are just complete idiots, and are completely just pissing away money. They are not. B

>For some reason, theres this streak on HN of people that think that VC's are just complete idiots, and are completely just pissing away money. They are not. But they are banking on the general public to buy shares without scrutinizing the business sustainability and be left holding the bag.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
adventured 6y ago
Which bags were the public left holding? There have been a lot of very easy wins for investors picking up VC-backed companies in the public market. If all you did is just spray around some diversification at prominent tech IPOs, you've done extraordinarily well over time. Since IPO: Shopify? $28 to $754 ServiceNow? $25 to $361 Alibaba? $93 to $199 Splunk? $36 to $149 DocuSign? $39 to $119 Teladoc? $28 to $188 Atlassian? $27 to $175 MongoDB? $30 to $194 Square? $12 to $73 Twilio? $26 to $187 Workday? $48 to $153 Veeva? $44 to $195 Zoom? $62 to $167 Facebook? $38 to $205 Palo Alto Networks? $53 to $215 Okta? $23 to $177 Wix? $17 to $166 Wayfair? $32 to $183 The Trade Desk? $27 to $292 Coupa? $29 to $205 RingCentral? $18 to $283 Zendesk? $15 to $73 Zscaler? $33 to $75 PayPal? $34 to $143 CyberArk? $30 to $96 Proofpoint? $13 to $115 Qualys? $13 to $101 Smartsheet? $19 to $52 JD.com? $20 to $47 Anaplan? $24 to $40 Zillow? $26 to $46 Roku? $26 to $117 Or more recently: CrowdStrike? $58 to $76 Cloudflare? $18 to $27 Fastly? $24 to $36 Maybe they're holding one of the older bags. Fortinet? $8 to $137 Tesla? $20 to $790 Salesforce? $4 to $169 Baidu? $8 to $95 Netflix? $1 to $438 Google? $50 to $1,349 Oh the horror.
- novia 6y ago
  blue apron?
- grogenaut 6y ago
  Groupon, Singulex, etc. you're survivor biasing on those who actually did well.
- ggm 6y ago
  Several of these sucked the lifeblood out of other income streams, which is just money redistributed not value added. Several broke regulated public utility or near utility functions like housing and transport. Some are just scofflaws (uber, Airbnb) Many are extra territorial trans national tax avoidance These left and right columns distort the actual net effect on the economy. Sure: my pension fund will be in all of them
  - s1artibartfast 6y ago
    All of that may or may not be true, but the claim was that VCs pumped and dumped the companies on hapless investors, which clearly isn't the case.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

adventured 6y ago

Which bags were the public left holding? There have been a lot of very easy wins for investors picking up VC-backed companies in the public market. If all you did is just spray around some diversification at prominent tech IPOs, you've done extraordinarily well over time. Since IPO: Shopify? $28 to $754 ServiceNow? $25 to $361 Alibaba? $93 to $199 Splunk? $36 to $149 DocuSign? $39 to $119 Teladoc? $28 to $188 Atlassian? $27 to $175 MongoDB? $30 to $194 Square? $12 to $73 Twilio? $26 to $187 Workday? $48 to $153 Veeva? $44 to $195 Zoom? $62 to $167 Facebook? $38 to $205 Palo Alto Networks? $53 to $215 Okta? $23 to $177 Wix? $17 to $166 Wayfair? $32 to $183 The Trade Desk? $27 to $292 Coupa? $29 to $205 RingCentral? $18 to $283 Zendesk? $15 to $73 Zscaler? $33 to $75 PayPal? $34 to $143 CyberArk? $30 to $96 Proofpoint? $13 to $115 Qualys? $13 to $101 Smartsheet? $19 to $52 JD.com? $20 to $47 Anaplan? $24 to $40 Zillow? $26 to $46 Roku? $26 to $117 Or more recently: CrowdStrike? $58 to $76 Cloudflare? $18 to $27 Fastly? $24 to $36 Maybe they're holding one of the older bags. Fortinet? $8 to $137 Tesla? $20 to $790 Salesforce? $4 to $169 Baidu? $8 to $95 Netflix? $1 to $438 Google? $50 to $1,349 Oh the horror.

novia 6y ago
blue apron?
grogenaut 6y ago
Groupon, Singulex, etc. you're survivor biasing on those who actually did well.
ggm 6y ago
Several of these sucked the lifeblood out of other income streams, which is just money redistributed not value added. Several broke regulated public utility or near utility functions like housing and transport. Some are just scofflaws (uber, Airbnb) Many are extra territorial trans national tax avoidance These left and right columns distort the actual net effect on the economy. Sure: my pension fund will be in all of them
- s1artibartfast 6y ago
  All of that may or may not be true, but the claim was that VCs pumped and dumped the companies on hapless investors, which clearly isn't the case.