pmarca

19 ms·

211.
by pmarca 14y ago
> So it seems for investors, the big winners are simply based on luck... That's not quite right. It's more a question of taking enough of the right kind of chances in funding the companies that you do fund, as opposed to all the compan
212.
by pmarca 14y ago
> I wonder if there's a lesson here in that good ideas that seem bad tend to be highly polarizing. Yes -- exactly -- and they tend to generate a lot of heat in group discussions. One of the indicators we watch for are people getting vi
213.
by pmarca 14y ago
Yes -- this is why, for example, we (at A16Z) have such a strong bias towards technical founders with strong personalities, typically with a background of accomplishment of some reasonably strong form (even if very young). You have to scre
214.
by pmarca 14y ago
I know which Demo Day I would go to! (The Black Swan one.)
215.
by pmarca 14y ago
> If your startup ends up making you a million dollars a year you will probably be very happy and rightfully call yourself a success. I see this a lot from various corners of the startup ecosystem, particularly 37 Signals and their foll
216.
by pmarca 14y ago
It's straight out of their own press release boilerplate!
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by pmarca 14y ago
Yes, really. I've seen that many, many times.
218.
by pmarca 14y ago
And you are still being naive for thinking that companies can be run purely by happy-talk.
219.
by pmarca 14y ago
"If you make a one-on-one into a periodic meeting like ben is suggesting, it will invariably end up as yet another pointless formality." --> No, that's not true when the manager is competent. "Ideally, in a well-run company, an employee
220.
by pmarca 14y ago
Thank you for your very interesting post, and please ignore the pinhead complaining about formatting.
221.
by pmarca 14y ago
Jamie lives a hard life.
222.
by pmarca 14y ago
100% agree :-).
223.
by pmarca 14y ago
We have a 10+ year lockup on our money -- we can go to 13 years without too much effort, and longer if necessary -- so there's no near term pressure for financial return. The goal is to build Meteor to its full potential both as a technolog
224.
by pmarca 14y ago
That's not our thinking :-). I'd say our thinking is threefold: * Meteor needs to exist. There needs to be a great way to build modern, dynamic client-server web apps. Meteor is a real breakthrough and deserves to be fully built out and s
225.
by pmarca 14y ago
Maybe this will help: http://bhorowitz.com/2012/02/06/the-future-of-networking/
226.
by pmarca 14y ago
We didn't write it.
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by pmarca 14y ago
You're right -- let me reword -- nothing that he wrote is true except for the first half of the third paragraph.
228.
by pmarca 14y ago
That wasn't really how the Github guys were thinking about their choices, but I'll answer the question as asked... By raising this round privately instead of going public now, they (a) get a financing partner (us) that completely understand
229.
by pmarca 14y ago
I found it to be very flattering :-).
230.
by pmarca 14y ago
It's not.
231.
by pmarca 14y ago
None of what you said is true :-).
232.
by pmarca 14y ago
I'll leave it to the company to describe what they are going to do (and they talk about some of that in their blog post today). I can say that my partner Peter and I have spent a lot of time with the guys over the last several months, and
233.
by pmarca 14y ago
This is exactly right.
234.
by pmarca 14y ago
That's an interesting post. It can be read two completely different ways.
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by pmarca 14y ago
This is an extraordinary overview for any entrepreneur thinking about how to put together a business plan that will appeal to us at AH -- fantastic!
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by pmarca 14y ago
I'm not an expert (and don't want to comment on any particular company or product), but it's an intriguing idea. I think Marc Benioff was an early innovator in this area. It will be interesting to see what new ideas entrepreneurs -- or th
237.
by pmarca 14y ago
Sorry, we did not intend to draw that distinction. I described this in detail in another comment, but we made a commitment of half of lifetime earnings/wealth/whatever you want to call it from venture capital to nonprofits, over our lifeti
238.
by pmarca 14y ago
Yes, and that's also true of us, and at least several of the other top venture firms. And it's worth noting that Mike Moritz is already a signatory to the Giving Pledge.
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by pmarca 14y ago
The only part I don't like about the idea of trying to reconstruct society on a basis that poverty will be impossible is that previous attempts to do that tended to result in millions of people being killed. Funny how that works :-).
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by pmarca 14y ago
> A side question, any idea if the contributions are from the firm or the individual partners? From the individual General Partners.

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