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To paraphrase Matt Levine: the fact that you lost a billion dollars means someone else trusted you with a billion dollars, and that’s reason enough for financie

by Keegs 3y ago

To paraphrase Matt Levine: the fact that you lost a billion dollars means someone else trusted you with a billion dollars, and that’s reason enough for financiers to trust you with yet another billion, thinking surely you’ll get it right this time.

steveBK123 3y ago
Yup, you see this pattern elsewhere whenever it comes to credentials. Oh they went to __ school, they must be good. Oh they worked at __ co, they must be good. Oh they worked under __ [team/manager], they must be good. Oh they launched a [fund/startup] before, they must be good. Once you get the foot in the door once, it's easier to get your foot in the next 10 doors.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- lisper 3y ago
  This is true, but it's a two-edged sword. If you don't continually open new doors it becomes, "Oh, they haven't done anything new in N years, they must be bad."
  - noisy_boy 3y ago
    That would perfectly explain why such people pursue short-term gains over everything else and once things start to look bad, take the golden parachute and start another initiative to repeat all of it again while being lauded as "serial entrepreneur".
darkerside 3y ago
Reminds me of the story about not firing the programmer who just caused a million dollar bug in production. Why would I fire him? I just spent a million dollars training him.
- throw__away7391 3y ago
  You really do learn a lot with these big mistakes though. I mean you can read all the books you want, until you’ve actually lived through a major outage on a high traffic system I think there’s certain things that are just really hard to understand.
  - ClumsyPilot 3y ago
    programming dies not have the element of chance that incesting does. Its a bit like conoaring exact science and gambling
rchaud 3y ago
That's the public-facing reason. The real reason is that dropping him after the first big losses would make it clear that you f'd up by backing him in the first place.

by Keegs 3y ago

steveBK123 3y ago

Yup, you see this pattern elsewhere whenever it comes to credentials. Oh they went to __ school, they must be good. Oh they worked at __ co, they must be good. Oh they worked under __ [team/manager], they must be good. Oh they launched a [fund/startup] before, they must be good. Once you get the foot in the door once, it's easier to get your foot in the next 10 doors.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
lisper 3y ago
This is true, but it's a two-edged sword. If you don't continually open new doors it becomes, "Oh, they haven't done anything new in N years, they must be bad."
- noisy_boy 3y ago
  That would perfectly explain why such people pursue short-term gains over everything else and once things start to look bad, take the golden parachute and start another initiative to repeat all of it again while being lauded as "serial entrepreneur".

darkerside 3y ago

Reminds me of the story about not firing the programmer who just caused a million dollar bug in production. Why would I fire him? I just spent a million dollars training him.

throw__away7391 3y ago
You really do learn a lot with these big mistakes though. I mean you can read all the books you want, until you’ve actually lived through a major outage on a high traffic system I think there’s certain things that are just really hard to understand.
- ClumsyPilot 3y ago
  programming dies not have the element of chance that incesting does. Its a bit like conoaring exact science and gambling

rchaud 3y ago

That's the public-facing reason. The real reason is that dropping him after the first big losses would make it clear that you f'd up by backing him in the first place.