4 ms·

The core of ponzi schemes is recruitment. There is no recruitment happening here, just terrible business

• spaceman_2020 4y ago
  Offering drivers generous bonuses to sign-up, encouraging them to take on loans to buy cars (even extending credit - as they did here in India) - and then pulling it all away, leaving poorly educated drivers with loans they can’t service anymore - that’s the definition of recruitment.
• z9znz 4y ago
  The venture capital investment rounds are absolutely Ponzis. Every round is for a higher valuation, and so every investory knows they are paying more for the same number of shares as a previous round. But they believe that a future scenario (investment round) will increase the valuation such that their investment will become profitable. Show me _any_ startup where an investment round was at a lower valuation than the previous round. Unless you can do that, and show that the company was currently profitable, then it is a Ponzi scheme. Why would an investor invest in something that has no profit? They would only do that if they believed that in the future there would be enough profit to increase their value given the time cost. If you look at Uber, the amount of investment, and the 8+ years of zero profit, the only conclusion you could reach is that each round believed that there would be a subsequent round that would increase valuation and provide a profit for them.
• legostormtroopr 4y ago
  Seed, Series A, Series B, Series C, IPO - looks like there is plenty of recuitment happening.