
Want to Do Business in Silicon Valley? Better Act Nice - atlasunshrugged
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/10/style/oh-behave.html
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purple_ducks
I don't see the issue here.

Would we be so hard on him if he was knowledgeable about blood testing and had
tweeted about Theranos when they ultimately failed?

The less silence is the norm, the better.

We need people to publicly call out bullshit when they see it (at least he
waited until they failed rather than when they were trying to succeed)

Some people who thought they knew better than actual experts failed and took
174m of somebody else's money with them.

It benefits certain angels & early stage VCs to have a culture of relentless
optimism and fantasy in the face of reality, and to ensure silence is forced
on everyone except those who succeed.

------
Bostonian
I don't understand what Palmer did wrong. When a business fails, we should try
to understand why, so that others don't throw away time and money making the
same mistakes.

~~~
sharkmerry
Perhaps just the smugness of the tweet and the fact that is just was patting
himself on the back and reveling in the failure of others?

And his argument, "disrupting school was a terrible strategy" but doesnt
elaborate why..

[https://twitter.com/educationpalmer/status/11449091634594816...](https://twitter.com/educationpalmer/status/1144909163459481601)

"$174M lessons here. We passed on @Altschool multiple times, mainly because
disrupting school was a terrible strategy, but also b/c founders didn’t
understand #edtech is all about partnering w/existing districts, schools and
educators (not just “product”)"

~~~
blackflame7000
Yea if HN is any indicator, people do not like smugness. Just post something
slightly condescending and watch it get downvoted to oblivion.

~~~
sharkmerry
I dont notice the same thing but we could be looking at different
articles/comments on here.

anyways, i think the real issue here is just the emptiness of it. Anyone can
brag they knew (or pretend they knew) that a business would fail after it
already did.

and hes not providing insight. Just, it was "Terrible" and they "did it
wrong".

