
Startup Boom a “Dangerous, High-Stakes Ponzi Scheme”: Chamath Palihapitiya - SQL2219
https://wolfstreet.com/2018/11/07/startup-boom-a-dangerous-high-stakes-ponzi-scheme-silicon-valley-investor/
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katzgrau
Venture capital can be the driver behind the early demise of a company.
Investor goals are rarely, if ever, fully aligned with founder or even company
goals.

In the end, VC money seems to benefit very few startups - - and now, even fund
investors.

I say this as a former wannabe who was forced to bootstrap a SaaS company
because I couldn't raise a round. It's been wild to see companies in my space
that did raise money and are either no longer in business, were forced to
pivot to a business investors liked better, or forced to sell (acquihire)
because the pressure from the money they took on.

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rdlecler1
We’ve exhausted growth via globalization, professionalization, and IT. Most of
the arbitrage is gone. What’s left is an innovative edge. Take Monsanto which
bought Climate for $1b when it had $30m in revenue. People thought it was
crazy at the time but along comes Bayer (and Monsanto’s digital assets and the
optionality and future proofing this brings) command a $5b - $10b premium.
Companies are no longer able to (or unwilling to) do internal innovation and
so you need to outsource that — and those R&D budgets represent hundreds of
billions of dollars, but even better you only pay for the winners. We’re going
to look back in 10 years and realize we could have been investing a lot more
in venture capital. Yes, the asset class has lagged but there’s a whole
universe of offline companies that are just now coming into the market. Every
company will need to be a tech company and companies just don’t have the DNA
to do it themselves. As long as CAC << NPV(LTV) then yes you should spend.

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olivermarks
'Companies are no longer able to (or unwilling to) do internal innovation and
so you need to outsource that' I'm assuming you only mean huge, mature
enterprises here.

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purplezooey
There's a great future in plastics. Think about it.

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starbeast
This sounds great. Where is it?

