8 ms·

Being full of value‑added shit

91 points by rmason 1y ago

pixl97 1y ago
You meet a lot of people with no morals and no money. You meet less people with morals and no money. You meet even fewer with no morals and a lot of money. And you meet almost no one with morals and a lot of money.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- GianFabien 1y ago
  Makes for a four-quadrant diagram that Gartner would never publish.
  - neilv 1y ago
    If ChatGPT generates it for someone's homework or slide deck, who's to say Gartner didn't. :) NO Money Lot of Money +--------------+--------------+ N M | ** * * * * | | O o | * ** * * | * | r | * * * * * | | a | ** * * | * * | l | * * * | | s | * * * | | +--------------+--------------+ M | * * * | * | o | * * | | r | * | | a |* * | | l | | | s | | | +--------------+--------------+ Source: Gartner, 2025
- kriro 1y ago
  I guess it depends on your definition of a lot. There are plenty of 100 million+ net worth people that have a good moral compass in my experience. Typically these are family business owners or what we'd call owner-operators. Edit: I'd even argue the general idea of capitalism is virtuous by default. 1) I provide something others find useful 2) I invest (providing capital for others to do 1)
  - cwsx 1y ago
    > I'd even argue the general idea of capitalism is virtuous by default. I wouldn't, in my opinion: Capitalism incentivizes selfishness at the detriment of others that are "playing the [capitalism] game" or anti-competitive practices. It also pushes people to hoard resources - think Tragedy of the Commons or anti-competitive practices in general. The incentive is to reduce the amount of resources available to competition while increasing your holdings, allowing you to repeat the loop but with higher chances of success. Providing something others find useful seems like a lucky side effect that often isn't even true, there's a lot of industries who have no intention of providing something useful (like stock trading, short trading especially). Most companies are trying to reduce costs as much as possible, reducing the usefulness of their product/service to the lowest point that people will still pay for. But I agree with your other points - just because capitalism breeds selfishness it doesn't mean all parties are going to the extremes.
    - throwawaymaths 1y ago
      You can't be totally selfish and function in a capitalist society though. To obtain capital at some level you have to provide something that someone else wants. > It also pushes people to hoard you don't get really rich by hoarding. you get rich by investing in others. > short trading especially no. short trading is the least greedy form of investment. your gains are hard capped and your downside risk is unbounded. long trading has unbounded upside and hard capped downside. if you are shorting aside from exceptionally weird cases, you are acting on information you perceive that other people dont see (like you think the CEO is defrauding the public) and you are praying to god nobody bails out the company.
    - derektank 1y ago
      This is obviously not directly related to the original article, but I don't understand what you mean when you say stock trading isn't useful. Do you mean brokers aren't useful? I don't understand how this could be the case when many people want to own stocks (one major reason being that they want to be able to draw on capital gains to provide income in retirement, either personally or institutionally as part of a pension).
- mppm 1y ago
  I think you are misusing Berkson's Paradox here. It applies when you sample two extremes, i.e. when you look at the richest 0.1% and the most moral 0.1% and notice that the two appear mutually exclusive, even though they might actually be uncorrelated in the general population. When you look only at the richest 0.1% and notice their lack of morals compared to the general population, that is a legit correlation.
worik 1y ago
"My friend, you can trust me"
hn_throwaway_99 1y ago
What was the point of this blog post? To re-use the shit metaphor, to the author of this blog post: Shit or get off the pot. I have a general disdain for these types of post where the author has to know that the very first thing every reader would do is google around to try to figure out exactly who he's talking about (in this case, the psychopathic VC). I.e. leave plenty of details where a determined searcher can figure out the subject of the post, but without naming names. IMO, if you're going to go that far, you should either name names or shut up. Secondly, the only other takeaway I got from this post is "beware of narcissistic psychopaths, especially in the VC world." Yeah, and water is wet.
- dbmikus 1y ago
  VC industry likes to mention that there are bad actors without actually mentioning the bad actors. It's a faux pas to actually name and shame. The industry happens to be small enough and super relationship-driven so, for better or worse, observing the faux pas matters.
  - neilv 1y ago
    I cannot think of a selfish upside to broadcasting who the alleged bad actors are. But I can think of selfish downside to doing so. Retaliation and discrediting, by someone you already know is underhanded. Also, you don't want to be known as someone who might violate a confidence, or air industry dirty laundry. Also, when someone Web searches your name, you don't want some scandal headline to come up. I can also think of selfish reason to say that there are bad actors, without naming them: "Of course, we're good ones, just warning you, because we're looking out for you."
robomc 1y ago
So we're just posting third party blind item gossip on here huh.
- absurdo 1y ago
  [flagged]
  - hackit2 1y ago
    Then they gossip about that, then they gossip about the gossip. Its a feedback loop.
    - marcosdumay 1y ago
      Well, it's a social network.
  - Terr_ 1y ago
    That's a weird juxtaposition of rare events and extraordinarily frequent ones. :p
mjd 1y ago
This reminds me of the observation that you shouldn't buy a car from a dealer who calls himself Honest Ed. Because honest people just go around being honest, they don't go around broadcasting honesty.
- robomc 1y ago
  The tennis example is weird though. I don't think people who are bad at tennis go around claiming they're great at tennis, do they?
  - alemanek 1y ago
    They do, seriously it is very common with male interactions. I have seen it first hand with tennis, golf, chess, and bowling. With golf easily being the most common
    - kriro 1y ago
      Chess? Can't you just ask for their ELO? Or some proxy like chess.com rating? If you're good you must have played a lot of games. If you did, you got some number to back it up.
    - weitendorf 1y ago
      I find it helpful to tell people who I know only dabble in eg chess that I am "pretty good at chess" when they do not have enough context on things like Elo and FIDE ratings to be able to understand comparisons like that. Of course, if someone knows what Elo is or is an active chess player then I will more humbly just tell them I am only like 1600 on lichess. I don't think this is necessarily bad. Compared to people who only dabble in things, someone who spends a decent amount of time on something actually is "pretty good" at it even though they might not be top tier to people within that same culture. I think there is some popular (dan luu?) blog about this. You can actually pretty easily be in the top 1% of skill or knowledge on something, and while that doesn't make you a world expert by any means, it does kinda make you an expert to an average person. My 1600 rating is very good within the pool of people who know what chess is and can play it, even though it's not impressive at all for people who actively play chess.
ta2112 1y ago
I've noticed this with movies. If a movie is being advertised a lot, it's usually a bad movie. Why else are they trying so hard? The opposite happened with the Matrix. I think I saw 1 bus stop poster for it, and didn't know what it was until multiple people at work said, "you have to see it!" Too bad they never made a sequel.
- paulryanrogers 1y ago
  > Too bad they never made a sequel. Sarcasm?
  - cpfohl 1y ago
    https://xkcd.com/566/ https://xkcd.com/566/ Language warning if you have kids around or don’t like that.
- GianFabien 1y ago
  from Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Matrix_(franchise) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Matrix_(franchise) sequels: The Matrix Reloaded The Matrix Revolutions The Matrix Resurrections
  - Terr_ 1y ago
    I'm sure the parent-poster is making a joke about the other movies being bad, as opposed to being bizarrely unaware of them.
  - phoronixrly 1y ago
    It's an xkcd reference
    - wink 1y ago
      No, this is older than the xkcd. I think it goes back to 1999-2003, when we had hoped we'd ever get a fourth Star Wars movie.
genman 1y ago
Isn't it the symptom of current time - you have to blatantly self promote yourself? Or is it still easier to let your work speak for you instead of noisy self promotion?
- wredcoll 1y ago
  Was there a time in human history where self promotion didn't work? "Look upon my works ye mighty...."
- pixelbro 1y ago
  I hope you're joking. You can spend years developing ground-breaking shit in the dark and no one will ever know you exist. You might attract a miniscule following of people who recognize the value of what you're creating, but they won't evangelize for you.
ChrisMarshallNY 1y ago
Eh. I’m not really into “hard and fast” rules. In most cases, there’s no reason to mention personal assets, but sometimes, it’s useful. Same goes for personal weaknesses. Whatever I say, I mean; whether making a commitment, giving a compliment, or telling someone that I may be good (or bad) at something, so they can make their own mind up. I do feel that it’s important to back up what I say. That’s a big reason that I’m so open.
hahahacorn 1y ago
Not to be that guy but this just isn’t a helpful heuristic and I think the author fundamentally misunderstands introductions. The point of self identifying with some operating principle (value-add) isn’t about guaranteeing it to be true, it’s a social contract that A: indicates your priorities and B: offers a short-circuit to credibility. Just because you state yourself as value-add doesn’t mean I am going to believe you are a value-add, it indicates that being value-add is your priority, so if I need to call on my investors for something I might go to you first, and if you fail to be a value add then you discredit literally your entire existence in my professional network. This is why “introduce yourself” is such a valuable question. It reveals how a person views themself in a context. Do they jump into titles? Achievements? Their operating principles? Their failures? Their insecurities? I don’t know. I prefer this over no information.
- aspenmayer 1y ago
  > This is why “introduce yourself” is such a valuable question. It reveals how a person views themself in a context. Do they jump into titles? Achievements? Their operating principles? Their failures? Their insecurities? An old standby I love that is familiar, warm, emphasizes respect and consent, and plays well with individuals or a group: “How may I help you?”
mumbisChungo 1y ago
[flagged]
nmaley 1y ago
I knew a tech founder once who spent an hour lecturing us (his employees) on business ethics. He'd even written a little red book (like Mao) to codify his thoughts on how we should all behave. Fast forward a few years and the guy flees the US after being charged with securities fraud. Spends the rest of his life living on his millions in a foreign country with no US extradition treaty.
- everfrustrated 1y ago
  He fled rather than have the book thrown at him!
nchmy 1y ago
I'm an empath
BrenBarn 1y ago
It seems like this is just saying "corporate buzzwords are bullshit", which I agree with but I'm not sure it's news.

91 points by rmason 1y ago

You meet a lot of people with no morals and no money. You meet less people with morals and no money. You meet even fewer with no morals and a lot of money. And you meet almost no one with morals and a lot of money.

deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
GianFabien 1y ago
Makes for a four-quadrant diagram that Gartner would never publish.
- neilv 1y ago
  If ChatGPT generates it for someone's homework or slide deck, who's to say Gartner didn't. :) NO Money Lot of Money +--------------+--------------+ N M | ** * * * * | | O o | * ** * * | * | r | * * * * * | | a | ** * * | * * | l | * * * | | s | * * * | | +--------------+--------------+ M | * * * | * | o | * * | | r | * | | a |* * | | l | | | s | | | +--------------+--------------+ Source: Gartner, 2025
kriro 1y ago
I guess it depends on your definition of a lot. There are plenty of 100 million+ net worth people that have a good moral compass in my experience. Typically these are family business owners or what we'd call owner-operators. Edit: I'd even argue the general idea of capitalism is virtuous by default. 1) I provide something others find useful 2) I invest (providing capital for others to do 1)
- cwsx 1y ago
  > I'd even argue the general idea of capitalism is virtuous by default. I wouldn't, in my opinion: Capitalism incentivizes selfishness at the detriment of others that are "playing the [capitalism] game" or anti-competitive practices. It also pushes people to hoard resources - think Tragedy of the Commons or anti-competitive practices in general. The incentive is to reduce the amount of resources available to competition while increasing your holdings, allowing you to repeat the loop but with higher chances of success. Providing something others find useful seems like a lucky side effect that often isn't even true, there's a lot of industries who have no intention of providing something useful (like stock trading, short trading especially). Most companies are trying to reduce costs as much as possible, reducing the usefulness of their product/service to the lowest point that people will still pay for. But I agree with your other points - just because capitalism breeds selfishness it doesn't mean all parties are going to the extremes.
  - throwawaymaths 1y ago
    You can't be totally selfish and function in a capitalist society though. To obtain capital at some level you have to provide something that someone else wants. > It also pushes people to hoard you don't get really rich by hoarding. you get rich by investing in others. > short trading especially no. short trading is the least greedy form of investment. your gains are hard capped and your downside risk is unbounded. long trading has unbounded upside and hard capped downside. if you are shorting aside from exceptionally weird cases, you are acting on information you perceive that other people dont see (like you think the CEO is defrauding the public) and you are praying to god nobody bails out the company.
  - derektank 1y ago
    This is obviously not directly related to the original article, but I don't understand what you mean when you say stock trading isn't useful. Do you mean brokers aren't useful? I don't understand how this could be the case when many people want to own stocks (one major reason being that they want to be able to draw on capital gains to provide income in retirement, either personally or institutionally as part of a pension).
mppm 1y ago
I think you are misusing Berkson's Paradox here. It applies when you sample two extremes, i.e. when you look at the richest 0.1% and the most moral 0.1% and notice that the two appear mutually exclusive, even though they might actually be uncorrelated in the general population. When you look only at the richest 0.1% and notice their lack of morals compared to the general population, that is a legit correlation.

worik 1y ago

"My friend, you can trust me"

hn_throwaway_99 1y ago

What was the point of this blog post? To re-use the shit metaphor, to the author of this blog post: Shit or get off the pot. I have a general disdain for these types of post where the author has to know that the very first thing every reader would do is google around to try to figure out exactly who he's talking about (in this case, the psychopathic VC). I.e. leave plenty of details where a determined searcher can figure out the subject of the post, but without naming names. IMO, if you're going to go that far, you should either name names or shut up. Secondly, the only other takeaway I got from this post is "beware of narcissistic psychopaths, especially in the VC world." Yeah, and water is wet.

dbmikus 1y ago
VC industry likes to mention that there are bad actors without actually mentioning the bad actors. It's a faux pas to actually name and shame. The industry happens to be small enough and super relationship-driven so, for better or worse, observing the faux pas matters.
- neilv 1y ago
  I cannot think of a selfish upside to broadcasting who the alleged bad actors are. But I can think of selfish downside to doing so. Retaliation and discrediting, by someone you already know is underhanded. Also, you don't want to be known as someone who might violate a confidence, or air industry dirty laundry. Also, when someone Web searches your name, you don't want some scandal headline to come up. I can also think of selfish reason to say that there are bad actors, without naming them: "Of course, we're good ones, just warning you, because we're looking out for you."

robomc 1y ago

So we're just posting third party blind item gossip on here huh.

absurdo 1y ago
[flagged]
- hackit2 1y ago
  Then they gossip about that, then they gossip about the gossip. Its a feedback loop.
  - marcosdumay 1y ago
    Well, it's a social network.
- Terr_ 1y ago
  That's a weird juxtaposition of rare events and extraordinarily frequent ones. :p

mjd 1y ago

This reminds me of the observation that you shouldn't buy a car from a dealer who calls himself Honest Ed. Because honest people just go around being honest, they don't go around broadcasting honesty.

robomc 1y ago
The tennis example is weird though. I don't think people who are bad at tennis go around claiming they're great at tennis, do they?
- alemanek 1y ago
  They do, seriously it is very common with male interactions. I have seen it first hand with tennis, golf, chess, and bowling. With golf easily being the most common
  - kriro 1y ago
    Chess? Can't you just ask for their ELO? Or some proxy like chess.com rating? If you're good you must have played a lot of games. If you did, you got some number to back it up.
  - weitendorf 1y ago
    I find it helpful to tell people who I know only dabble in eg chess that I am "pretty good at chess" when they do not have enough context on things like Elo and FIDE ratings to be able to understand comparisons like that. Of course, if someone knows what Elo is or is an active chess player then I will more humbly just tell them I am only like 1600 on lichess. I don't think this is necessarily bad. Compared to people who only dabble in things, someone who spends a decent amount of time on something actually is "pretty good" at it even though they might not be top tier to people within that same culture. I think there is some popular (dan luu?) blog about this. You can actually pretty easily be in the top 1% of skill or knowledge on something, and while that doesn't make you a world expert by any means, it does kinda make you an expert to an average person. My 1600 rating is very good within the pool of people who know what chess is and can play it, even though it's not impressive at all for people who actively play chess.

ta2112 1y ago

I've noticed this with movies. If a movie is being advertised a lot, it's usually a bad movie. Why else are they trying so hard? The opposite happened with the Matrix. I think I saw 1 bus stop poster for it, and didn't know what it was until multiple people at work said, "you have to see it!" Too bad they never made a sequel.

paulryanrogers 1y ago
> Too bad they never made a sequel. Sarcasm?
- cpfohl 1y ago
  https://xkcd.com/566/ https://xkcd.com/566/ Language warning if you have kids around or don’t like that.
GianFabien 1y ago
from Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Matrix_(franchise) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Matrix_(franchise) sequels: The Matrix Reloaded The Matrix Revolutions The Matrix Resurrections
- Terr_ 1y ago
  I'm sure the parent-poster is making a joke about the other movies being bad, as opposed to being bizarrely unaware of them.
- phoronixrly 1y ago
  It's an xkcd reference
  - wink 1y ago
    No, this is older than the xkcd. I think it goes back to 1999-2003, when we had hoped we'd ever get a fourth Star Wars movie.

genman 1y ago

Isn't it the symptom of current time - you have to blatantly self promote yourself? Or is it still easier to let your work speak for you instead of noisy self promotion?

wredcoll 1y ago
Was there a time in human history where self promotion didn't work? "Look upon my works ye mighty...."
pixelbro 1y ago
I hope you're joking. You can spend years developing ground-breaking shit in the dark and no one will ever know you exist. You might attract a miniscule following of people who recognize the value of what you're creating, but they won't evangelize for you.

ChrisMarshallNY 1y ago

Eh. I’m not really into “hard and fast” rules. In most cases, there’s no reason to mention personal assets, but sometimes, it’s useful. Same goes for personal weaknesses. Whatever I say, I mean; whether making a commitment, giving a compliment, or telling someone that I may be good (or bad) at something, so they can make their own mind up. I do feel that it’s important to back up what I say. That’s a big reason that I’m so open.

hahahacorn 1y ago

Not to be that guy but this just isn’t a helpful heuristic and I think the author fundamentally misunderstands introductions. The point of self identifying with some operating principle (value-add) isn’t about guaranteeing it to be true, it’s a social contract that A: indicates your priorities and B: offers a short-circuit to credibility. Just because you state yourself as value-add doesn’t mean I am going to believe you are a value-add, it indicates that being value-add is your priority, so if I need to call on my investors for something I might go to you first, and if you fail to be a value add then you discredit literally your entire existence in my professional network. This is why “introduce yourself” is such a valuable question. It reveals how a person views themself in a context. Do they jump into titles? Achievements? Their operating principles? Their failures? Their insecurities? I don’t know. I prefer this over no information.

aspenmayer 1y ago
> This is why “introduce yourself” is such a valuable question. It reveals how a person views themself in a context. Do they jump into titles? Achievements? Their operating principles? Their failures? Their insecurities? An old standby I love that is familiar, warm, emphasizes respect and consent, and plays well with individuals or a group: “How may I help you?”

mumbisChungo 1y ago

[flagged]

nmaley 1y ago

I knew a tech founder once who spent an hour lecturing us (his employees) on business ethics. He'd even written a little red book (like Mao) to codify his thoughts on how we should all behave. Fast forward a few years and the guy flees the US after being charged with securities fraud. Spends the rest of his life living on his millions in a foreign country with no US extradition treaty.

everfrustrated 1y ago
He fled rather than have the book thrown at him!

nchmy 1y ago

I'm an empath

BrenBarn 1y ago

It seems like this is just saying "corporate buzzwords are bullshit", which I agree with but I'm not sure it's news.