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Those are the possible outcomes for premier VC funded startups, so, yeah, that definitely excludes most startups.

• ritchiea 14y ago
  That's exactly my point. I wanted to draw attention to the fact that this is the floor only if you're USV or somewhere similar. And I understand Fred's perspective, no one wants to put hard work into something and see it fail to flourish. Just to say, wow, if you're as successful as USV people see tremendous value in your investments even when they don't work out. And I suspect from the tone the post wasn't written with it in mind that for many people this kind of downside would be a rather fortunate level of downside risk. Alternatively maybe the language he's using and what goes unstated is actually masking serious financial losses. But I think most startup failures actually result in founders' and investors' time & money up in smoke.