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That’s an accurate description of the majority of VC investment outcomes. The outlier-success stories aren’t called unicorns because they’re common. So it track
by altairprime 2mo ago
That’s an accurate description of the majority of VC investment outcomes. The outlier-success stories aren’t called unicorns because they’re common. So it tracks that Norway would tax valuations to curtail investments that generate no economic value for Norway (such as a typical forever-profitless business in round G with no profits to tax) and promote investments that generate economic value for Norway (such as a typical profitable business with profits to tax) — and if the VC gamblers want to gamble in Norway, their claimed valuations are taken at face value and taxed accordingly, which provides a direct financial incentive against valuation inflation.
- bot403 2mo agoThat round G company with negative cashflow is probably employing people, buying goods and services, etc all within Norway. To say it's not generating economic value is disingenuous at best.
- altairprime 2mo agoWhat % of their annual spend goes to foreign clouds? For most unicorns that would be their largest or second-largest cost, since unicorns, by design, tend to be focused on growth engines that scale up users without scaling up headcount. Taking 1% of a VC startup’s headcount is almost nothing relative to the money left on the table from 1% of their cloud costs. A sensible startup wouldn’t necessarily fit this description, but those are out of scope — this post is focused on unicorns, so that’s my focus as well.