pmarca

11 ms·

91.
by pmarca 13y ago
This discussions are always so outstanding. Has anyone ever actually seen a large organization where more than 85% of the people are high achieving?
92.
by pmarca 13y ago
They are enormously profitable, is where they are now. Same with mobile carriers who ran the same play.
93.
by pmarca 13y ago
That's a very idealized view. The reality is harsher. Public CEOs are under enormous pressure from many fronts.
94.
by pmarca 13y ago
I agree completely. The catch, though, is that Jeff had to endure years of vitriol and abuse from Wall Street and the press to get into this position. I have met a lot of founders who think they could get through that, and very few who act
95.
by pmarca 13y ago
The accounting rules (GAAP) have only a loose correlation to how most modern large companies actually operate the levers of their businesses. Management teams of well-run companies spend very little time thinking about the formal financial
96.
by pmarca 13y ago
Typically investments in private technology companies include a provision called "liquidation preference" where investors get their money out before other shareholders (managers and employees) get paid on an exit. A common term is
97.
by pmarca 13y ago
By "taking accountability" you mean he said he was taking accountability without actually suffering any consequences. That's not taking accountability, that's lying about it. Same with Harry Truman "the buck stops
98.
by pmarca 13y ago
That's not getting people to trust you. That's being a beta. That's getting people to know they can dominate you.
99.
by pmarca 13y ago
This frequently happens in the Valley although almost always as a side effect of some kind of personal relationship with a landlord. As a two-sided market the trick would definitely be to get landlords on board.
100.
by pmarca 13y ago
I don't care what that lunatic Alexander Graham Bell says, and I don't care what stupid little one-time demos he has in his lab, the telephone is never going to take off.
101.
by pmarca 13y ago
Right. That's exactly the same.
102.
by pmarca 13y ago
"When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?" --JM Keynes :-)
103.
by pmarca 13y ago
Oh no, something is showing the slightest glimmer of working, it must immediately be a bubble!
104.
by pmarca 13y ago
What's Russian for "liar liar pants on fire"?
105.
by pmarca 13y ago
Nope. We don't do those. It's the real deal. One of the fastest growing consumer properties of all time with huge market opportunity.
106.
by pmarca 13y ago
My working theory is that consumer ideas are both art and engineering. The art component either takes in the mind of the consumer or it doesn't. Like movies or music, sort of. Lots of great engineering teams can't get the art to w
107.
by pmarca 13y ago
I agree with your first three paragraphs. On your final point, I think that's certainly possible. At least that's the historical cycle. There are actually a bunch of plausible acquirers at scale -- of the new companies Salesforc
108.
by pmarca 13y ago
VCs as a group move as a herd just like every other class of investors. Enterprise startups performed very poorly between 2000 and 2008 (in large part because enterprises all but stopped buying new technology from new companies) and so the
109.
by pmarca 13y ago
Uber had the marketplace problem when they started but they figured out ways to punch through it, as has Lyft (our investment). Both companies have a range of clever techniques for how they did that. Drivers are not full time employees fo
110.
by pmarca 13y ago
I'm posting on this topic at: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6530536
111.
by pmarca 13y ago
I think it's mostly situational depending on the kind of business. For the classic, pure, viral, social and/or user-generated content businesses -- that will probably be monetized with advertising -- the generic headline metrics l
112.
by pmarca 13y ago
Rap Genius is on fire (in the good way). Good luck in jail!
113.
by pmarca 13y ago
Scott is a Harvard MBA himself. Me, I'm going to let the MBAs fight it out :-).
114.
by pmarca 13y ago
Yep, that's probably it.
115.
by pmarca 13y ago
Here are a bunch of general observations: * Enterprises have a continuous ongoing need for new technology. Some they build in-house but like anyone else they are mostly busy running their current business and so they tend to buy important
116.
by pmarca 13y ago
Yep, we do, and we set up many opportunities for our entrepreneurs to do that themselves. (I just got back from our annual CIO/CMO conference where there was a lot of exactly that.)
117.
by pmarca 13y ago
Generally yes. Distilled down, quality of team seems to be a better predictor of success in enterprise than consumer, in that we see many more great consumer teams struggling to get traction than we do great enterprise teams struggling to
118.
by pmarca 13y ago
I'll go read several textbooks on fruit fly genetics and get right back on this.
119.
by pmarca 13y ago
I think Scott's interview is being overinterpreted. We aren't blanket refusing to do Series A investments -- in fact, we are working on multiple Series A investments right now (both consumer and enterprise). Scott was describing
120.
by pmarca 13y ago
Correct -- this is a key consideration for actually running one of these funds that is not always obvious on the outside. A $5M A round investment carries an implied commitment to invest $10-15M more in later rounds.

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