No offense to Chamath (what I know of him, I think he's generally pretty smart and likable), but this is a bit of a stretch:
> He said that investors pump money into “shitty, useless, idiotic companies,” rather than addressing real problems like climate change and disease. Palihapitiya currently runs his own VC firm, Social Capital, which focuses on funding companies in sectors like healthcare and education.
I provided those data points because they represent more than half of the portfolio. I never said that SC didn't make investments in "real problems", I was making a point that they were also investing in companies that could be considered "shitty, useless, idiotic companies" and/or "weren't solving 'real problems'".
> That seems like a pretty healthy mix.
Yes, these guys are very good investors, no doubt. As a fellow capitalist I too would have made the same bets. But that has nothing to do with my point - which is the vision of the fund is inconsistent with what I would consider the vision of the majority of the companies that are invested in.
> aren't you contributing to the problem he's describing?
I'm increasingly convinced this sort of rhetoric is about advertising values to attract founders who care about alignment thereof rather than any real indication of their own investment choices. Social Capital isn't exactly focusing their money on getting poor kids from the hood into upper-quintile careers.
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If you listen to the talk he says many times "Get the Money" then focus on the real problems
The key here is you have to get the money first, then you have the power and resources to make social change and fix the real problems
So his mix of investments does not have to 100% "real problems" like climate change, his (stated) goal is to get capital from those other projects and use that to fund other companies that focus on "Real Problems"
And InstaEdu, within the education section, was that site where students would pay people to do their homework. It was just a place where students could cheat.
> He said that investors pump money into “shitty, useless, idiotic companies,” rather than addressing real problems like climate change and disease. Palihapitiya currently runs his own VC firm, Social Capital, which focuses on funding companies in sectors like healthcare and education.
http://www.socialcapital.com/portfolio/
19 Enterprise software companies
10 Financial services companies
5 consumer companies
including companies like this: https://www.bustle.com/about
These companies are focusing on "real problems"?