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> Maybe it's about what forms of success one is exposed to and what one sees is popular among one's peers? Fashion is fashion. For some it's a rebellion, a com

by DenisM 6y ago

> Maybe it's about what forms of success one is exposed to and what one sees is popular among one's peers? Fashion is fashion. For some it's a rebellion, a coming of age story, for others it's a way to blend in with the peers, be one of the cool guys. On a tangent: many (most?) investors are playing the same game, only by proxy. This is why the VC industry is losing money as a whole - they aren't there for the money.

Enginerrrd 6y ago
IMO the VC industry as a whole is losing money because a large fraction of them suffer from luck/survivorship bias & lack the wisdom to recognize that was the key to their past successes, and they all have a serious case of FOMO. A lot of tech hype is just hype and the reality is, if you don't understand a technology and if/why it really is superior to existing solutions, you almost certainly aren't going to make money off it.
- bilbo0s 6y ago
  >if you don't understand a technology and if/why it really is superior to existing solutions, you almost certainly aren't going to make money off it. Something closely related, but if you do understand a technology, and if/why it really is superior to existing solutions, you would almost certainly already be making money with that technology. So you do need to question a lot of investments into technology firms that have no revenue? They have no enormously expensive hardware component. (Like there is with, say, concentrated solar thermal technology.) There is often no onerous federal regulatory framework they need to navigate. (As exists for FDA compliant health care tech for instance.) Why are people laying out these enormous investments if not something of a combination of vanity and entertainment?
- baybal2 6y ago
  I always thought that VC funds always had a bit of a cargo cult atmosphere around them.
  - wpietri 6y ago
    Before coming to CA, I worked for financial traders. It was a commonplace that investors are herd animals. VCs are no exception. The cargo cult thing makes a lot of sense to me, honestly. Venture funding is a field where the feedback loops are long and noisy. It takes literal years to see results, and a lot more years to see if somebody is truly good, instead of glib and lucky. By that point, the technologies and trends have changed so much that there's not a lot of reason to think they're still good. And I think the way stakes have gotten larger since Bubble 1.0 makes it so much worse. The amount of money really increases the incentive to do, say, think absolutely anything that might get you a slice of the expected returns.

by DenisM 6y ago

Enginerrrd 6y ago

IMO the VC industry as a whole is losing money because a large fraction of them suffer from luck/survivorship bias & lack the wisdom to recognize that was the key to their past successes, and they all have a serious case of FOMO. A lot of tech hype is just hype and the reality is, if you don't understand a technology and if/why it really is superior to existing solutions, you almost certainly aren't going to make money off it.

bilbo0s 6y ago
>if you don't understand a technology and if/why it really is superior to existing solutions, you almost certainly aren't going to make money off it. Something closely related, but if you do understand a technology, and if/why it really is superior to existing solutions, you would almost certainly already be making money with that technology. So you do need to question a lot of investments into technology firms that have no revenue? They have no enormously expensive hardware component. (Like there is with, say, concentrated solar thermal technology.) There is often no onerous federal regulatory framework they need to navigate. (As exists for FDA compliant health care tech for instance.) Why are people laying out these enormous investments if not something of a combination of vanity and entertainment?
baybal2 6y ago
I always thought that VC funds always had a bit of a cargo cult atmosphere around them.
- wpietri 6y ago
  Before coming to CA, I worked for financial traders. It was a commonplace that investors are herd animals. VCs are no exception. The cargo cult thing makes a lot of sense to me, honestly. Venture funding is a field where the feedback loops are long and noisy. It takes literal years to see results, and a lot more years to see if somebody is truly good, instead of glib and lucky. By that point, the technologies and trends have changed so much that there's not a lot of reason to think they're still good. And I think the way stakes have gotten larger since Bubble 1.0 makes it so much worse. The amount of money really increases the incentive to do, say, think absolutely anything that might get you a slice of the expected returns.