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One can both be for equality and recognize this mandate sets the stage for flagrant corruption. If there were a mandate to invest in companies with founders w
by motohagiography 3y ago
One can both be for equality and recognize this mandate sets the stage for flagrant corruption.
If there were a mandate to invest in companies with founders who had certain attributes, it would be the most literal possible tokenization of those people, as their companies would be traded among investors as compliance credits. Let me be the first to set up a superpac hedge fund that runs a secondary over the counter market for these shares that takes institutional money in VC firms and puts it into an opaque portfolio of these companies in exchange for a compliance blessing. It's so brilliant, the only real problem I have is what to name the polycule.
Given the investors need exposure to them for their portfolio compliance, it creates the incentive within the company to actually do nothing from a growth and product perspective, and just loot whatever investment money investors were trying to throw at them to achieve their own mandates.
Not only would it reinforce prejudices against people with said attributes because they have been set up to fail and actively rewarded for being corrupt with the investor money, it creates a layer of politically controlled front companies who effectively tax venture portfolios without any accountability for where the money goes. The data is all you need to create a de-facto private tax system with a political party as the beneficiary. This scheme has nothing to do with diversity.
- metalforever 3y agoLook at the statistics of who gets funded again .
- singleshot_ 3y agoPerhaps I am missing something, but this magic entity you seek to form — why would it be a superPAC? What utility would that bring you in this circumstance?
- motohagiography 3y agoBecause as the main shareholder for the portfolio, the PAC would have the board seats to install the CEO and executives in each company, who could be trusted to return the money to the PAC and its causes in exchange for skimming the lucre and keeping the scheme going. It's a patronage operation.
- notahacker 3y agoI'm mainly missing why investors would go for the corrupt minority fake company shabang, when they could, y'know, write the same check to some minority founders who maybe didn't meet their usual selection heuristics[1] but seemed to have built a decent MVP in a decent market and have a bit of knowhow and lot of drive to grow it. [1]young men, brand name college, already based near Sand Hill Road, nerdy humour, not the sort of person that would shoot hoops... all the important stuff
- singleshot_ 3y agoOk but the superpac
- Jensson 3y agoNow we get the much improved: young women, brand name college, already based near Sand Hill Road, nerdy humour, not the sort of person that would shoot hoops... all the important stuff
- thelock85 3y agoThis hypothetical only holds true if so-called “tokenized” founders don’t have an inherit desire to succeed on the same level as any other founder. I really can’t think of any founder I’ve ever met who would not take a pot of money because of certain strings attached (though I’ve heard of extremely privileged founders who can say yes/no based on track record or reputation). In fact, I see founders contort their vision every which way to meet specific investment criteria. Similarly, I don’t know any VC who at least wouldn’t try to be in compliance AND find good investments. Maybe they would try and then default to the perspective you’ve described but I think it’s much more likely they would try to cook the stats (given the overall lack of accountability in the space) before propping up some “token” founder-in-name-only (again, an assumption I’d challenge). Edited for spelling.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]