

Responses to Hacker News and Dan Lyon’s Death of SV Piece - joashwee
http://metacog.tumblr.com/post/1191099189/responses-to-hacker-news-and-dan-lyons-death-of-sv

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hga
" _So you get a number of good startups, a bigger number of lame startups, and
a_ lot _of capital tied up with the fates of these little companies._ "

Is there really that much capital tied up into the small, low investment
required firms? (I mean, by definition they don't need a _lot_ up front and
current VCs aren't even structured to make such small investments.)

I don't know, but I have to wonder, because the elephant in the room, the
single thing that makes it difficult to get enough money to solve "hard
problems", is the brutal fact that SarBox was the last straw that closed the
IPO window for all but the most exceptional firms.

Investing a _lot_ of money in any single venture simply doesn't make sense any
more, unless the firm is one of those exceptional ones (think Facebook) or you
can see a way to get it bought by an existing big firm (MySpace is an
appropriate mirror example).

I'm not too worried about failures to "invest" in " _clean-tech, alternative
fuel, renewable energy_ ", for these government inspired and subsidized
boondoggles have a long and unsuccessful history going back to the '70s (if
you don't remember or know of the Synthetic Fuels Corporation
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthetic_Fuels_Corporation>) and this geneal
long lamentable history you should probably read up on it before being unhappy
that the sector is none too healthy right now; for that matter, factor in
NIMBY->BANANA (Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anything)).

(Which is not to say that some if this is both hard and high payoff: if we
could just figure out how to grow oil rich algae in mass quantities that would
be a game changer, but it's obviously very hard and unfortunately has yet to
be cracked in 3 plus decades of effort.)

What I'm worried about is that we're unlikely to see the next FPGA type
disruptive innovation, simply because so much investment is needed that
getting it back in a reasonable way/time frame is unlikely at best. Yes, we'll
see sustaining innovations, and there's a set of these low capital up front
web sites that count as disruptive (Facebook is a great example here), but in
general I fear we just aren't going to invent the future any more.

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krakensden
I think the real issue is, why does anyone think Dan Lyons is worth listening
to? He has a long history of trolling and shilling, we shouldn't indulge that
behavior or take him seriously.

~~~
shadowsun7
That's an ad hominem attack, on the same level as 'oh, he'd say that of
course, he's a politician.' When you do that, you lose the opportunity to
examine the arguments he's presenting based on merit.

~~~
hga
No, the more apropos argument would be "Oh, he'd say that of course, he's
'Tricky' Dick Nixon".

The parent poster is pointing out that Dan Lyons, not all pundits, has a
_very_ bad track record, one I'll note that goes back more than half a decade,
and therefore bias in looking at what he says is warranted.

Which is an argument I find hard to disagree with. If he wasn't the author of
Fake Steve Jobs I personally wouldn't be interested in a word he has to say;
there are other people out there with more credibility covering what he does
so he can be safely ignored.

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kiba
Ain't it the fact that 90% of everything sucks?

