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A16Z is consistently the most embarrassing VC firm at any given point in time. I guess optimistically they might be doing “outrage marketing” but it feels more

by chis 1y ago

A16Z is consistently the most embarrassing VC firm at any given point in time. I guess optimistically they might be doing “outrage marketing” but it feels more like one of those places where the CEO is just an idiot and tells his employees to jump on every trend. The funny part is that they still make money. It seems like once you’ve got the connections, being a VC is a very easy job these days.

orionsbelt 1y ago
VC is a marketing game. You want to be attractive to founders, so that the best founders/companies come to you and want to choose you.
- aprilthird2021 1y ago
  But is gassing up founders something they want? Idk, maybe. But just remember these guys crypto play and it feels like they'll just yes man you off a cliff if you're a founder...
  - doctoboggan 1y ago
    Yes people like that even if they think it doesn't work on them. Just like people who say advertising doesn't work on them when it really does work on us all.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
refulgentis 1y ago
It's been such a mind-boggling decline in intellect, combined with really odd and intense conspiratorial behavior around crypto, that I went into a bit a few months ago. My weak, uncited, understanding from then they're poorly positioned, i.e in our set they're still the guys who write you a big check for software, but in the VC set they're a joke: i.e. they misunderstood carpet bombing investment as something that scales, and went all in on way too many crypto firm. Now, they have embarrassed themselves with a ton of assets that need to get marked down, it's clearly behind the other bigs, but there's no forcing function to do markdowns. So we get primal screams about politics and LLM-generated articles about how a $9K video card is the perfect blend between price and performance. There's other comments effusively praising them on their unique technical expertise. I maintain a llama.cpp client on every platform you can think of. Nothing in this article makes any sense. If you're training, you wouldn't do it on only 4 $9K GPUs that you own. If you're inferencing, you're not getting much more out of this than you would a ~$2K Framework desktop.
- NitpickLawyer 1y ago
  > If you're inferencing, you're not getting much more out of this than you would a ~$2K Framework desktop. I was with you up till here. Come on! CPU inferencing is not it, even macs struggle with bigger models, longer contexts (esp. visible when agentic stuff gets > 32k tokens). The PRO6000 is the first gpu that actually makes sense to own from their "workstation" series.
  - refulgentis 1y ago
    Er, CPU inferencing? :) I didn't think I mentioned that! The Framework Desktop thing is that has unified memory with the GPU, so much like an M-series, you can inference disproportionately large models.
- CamperBob2 1y ago
  If you're inferencing, you're not getting much more out of this than you would a ~$2K Framework desktop. Well, you're getting the ability to maintain a context bigger than 8K or so, for one thing.
  - refulgentis 1y ago
    Well, no, at least, we're off by a factor of about 64x at the very least: 64 GB GPU M2 Max/M4 max top out at about 512K context for 20B params, and the Framework desktop I am referencing has 128 GB unified memory.
    - CamperBob2 1y ago
      What's the TTFT like on a GPU-poor rig, though, once you actually take advantage of large contexts?
      - refulgentis 1y ago
        I guess I'd say, why is the framework perceived as GPU poor? I don't have one but I also don't know why TTFT would be significantly lower than M-series (it's a good GPU!)
aprilthird2021 1y ago
Sequoia is also increasingly embarrassing. A shame because it wasn't but 10 years ago that these firms seemed like they were leading the charge of world-changing innovation, etc...
- the_snooze 1y ago
  Increasingly? This is the Sequoia who wrote thousands of words on Sam Bankman-Fried that uncritically said little more than “he’s so quirky and smart! ^_^” https://web.archive.org/web/20221027181005/https://www.sequoiacap.com/article/sam-bankman-fried-spotlight/ https://web.archive.org/web/20221027181005/https://www.sequo...
  - aprilthird2021 1y ago
    A great example. This wasn't but just 3 years ago, so definitely part of their increasing slide into embarrassment...
obscure-enigma 1y ago
YC seems to be hopping on every trend more than what A16Z does. The latter still bet on momentum and not just heat in the game
jryle70 1y ago
> consistently the most embarrassing VC firm at any given point in time Based on what? your feelings? > being a VC is a very easy job these days. There you go. Why hasn't everyone who have connections became VC.

by chis 1y ago

orionsbelt 1y ago

VC is a marketing game. You want to be attractive to founders, so that the best founders/companies come to you and want to choose you.

aprilthird2021 1y ago
But is gassing up founders something they want? Idk, maybe. But just remember these guys crypto play and it feels like they'll just yes man you off a cliff if you're a founder...
- doctoboggan 1y ago
  Yes people like that even if they think it doesn't work on them. Just like people who say advertising doesn't work on them when it really does work on us all.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

refulgentis 1y ago

It's been such a mind-boggling decline in intellect, combined with really odd and intense conspiratorial behavior around crypto, that I went into a bit a few months ago. My weak, uncited, understanding from then they're poorly positioned, i.e in our set they're still the guys who write you a big check for software, but in the VC set they're a joke: i.e. they misunderstood carpet bombing investment as something that scales, and went all in on way too many crypto firm. Now, they have embarrassed themselves with a ton of assets that need to get marked down, it's clearly behind the other bigs, but there's no forcing function to do markdowns. So we get primal screams about politics and LLM-generated articles about how a $9K video card is the perfect blend between price and performance. There's other comments effusively praising them on their unique technical expertise. I maintain a llama.cpp client on every platform you can think of. Nothing in this article makes any sense. If you're training, you wouldn't do it on only 4 $9K GPUs that you own. If you're inferencing, you're not getting much more out of this than you would a ~$2K Framework desktop.

NitpickLawyer 1y ago
> If you're inferencing, you're not getting much more out of this than you would a ~$2K Framework desktop. I was with you up till here. Come on! CPU inferencing is not it, even macs struggle with bigger models, longer contexts (esp. visible when agentic stuff gets > 32k tokens). The PRO6000 is the first gpu that actually makes sense to own from their "workstation" series.
- refulgentis 1y ago
  Er, CPU inferencing? :) I didn't think I mentioned that! The Framework Desktop thing is that has unified memory with the GPU, so much like an M-series, you can inference disproportionately large models.
CamperBob2 1y ago
If you're inferencing, you're not getting much more out of this than you would a ~$2K Framework desktop. Well, you're getting the ability to maintain a context bigger than 8K or so, for one thing.
- refulgentis 1y ago
  Well, no, at least, we're off by a factor of about 64x at the very least: 64 GB GPU M2 Max/M4 max top out at about 512K context for 20B params, and the Framework desktop I am referencing has 128 GB unified memory.
  - CamperBob2 1y ago
    What's the TTFT like on a GPU-poor rig, though, once you actually take advantage of large contexts?
    - refulgentis 1y ago
      I guess I'd say, why is the framework perceived as GPU poor? I don't have one but I also don't know why TTFT would be significantly lower than M-series (it's a good GPU!)

aprilthird2021 1y ago

Sequoia is also increasingly embarrassing. A shame because it wasn't but 10 years ago that these firms seemed like they were leading the charge of world-changing innovation, etc...

the_snooze 1y ago
Increasingly? This is the Sequoia who wrote thousands of words on Sam Bankman-Fried that uncritically said little more than “he’s so quirky and smart! ^_^” https://web.archive.org/web/20221027181005/https://www.sequoiacap.com/article/sam-bankman-fried-spotlight/ https://web.archive.org/web/20221027181005/https://www.sequo...
- aprilthird2021 1y ago
  A great example. This wasn't but just 3 years ago, so definitely part of their increasing slide into embarrassment...

obscure-enigma 1y ago

YC seems to be hopping on every trend more than what A16Z does. The latter still bet on momentum and not just heat in the game

jryle70 1y ago

> consistently the most embarrassing VC firm at any given point in time Based on what? your feelings? > being a VC is a very easy job these days. There you go. Why hasn't everyone who have connections became VC.