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khalloud | 10 years ago

If we look at this from a risk-reward perspective and define 10 as the maximum reward for the maximum amount of risk then we have the entrepreneur who is a 10 for obvious reasons, an Angel who invests in the entrepreneur (maybe not the idea really because it might pivot a few times) maybe at an 8, then VCs at 7, bigger institutional investors at 5, and so on and so forth until the average teacher in Michigan who's pension allocates .001% of AUMs to VC at maybe .5 it becomes clear that if that structure becomes unbalanced the overall value creation cycle starts to become disfigured. In other words everyone tends to forget what's really important. For example if an entrepreneur doesn't feel that there is a great deal of risk to their personal livelihood as well as a great deal of reward for taking that risk and an inherent difficulty of having to earn every single cent (i.e. if they assume they can find easy money) then they are probably less likely to dig as deep as they can to come up with ingenious solutions to problems which is really the core of the whole tech startup scene. And then we can back trace that all the way back to the teacher in Michigan who might think that they are better off giving their money directly to someone who is a "VC" in SV. Basically the whole risk-reward equation becomes unbalanced. As a result when S#$$ hits the fan for them, everyone who doesn't really understand that model/equation will slow down. But my theory is that the ones that actually stick to the fundamental rules will keep plugging along with a small grin on their faces because they are glad that they are the ones who actually start to lead again and create value with a lot less BS!

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