VCs are salesmen. They are selling to public markets.
All of VC is trying to make a product that looks attractive to public markets. VCs are in sales and public relations.
The most obvious signal of this is how they continually select a college dropout or 20-something as a “genius founder”. There are rare examples of this happening but a much more logical play is someone who has worked in their industry for 10+ years and made a lot of connections. The invention of the “dropout genius” was because public market investors like that story to mimic Gates and Zuckerberg. In reality 99% of 20 year old CEOs that are handed millions of dollars are fucking idiots and nightmares to work for, lacking any professional and managerial experience, plus the “anointed one” marking giving them unearned authority.
While I loved the free-money era as an entrepreneur, honestly the mal-investment is absurd and we need a cleansing of the charlatans in the tech industry. VCs are an area that needs to massively contract.
- They are willing to work long hours and sacrifice the life they mostly don't have yet for a 1% chance of success.
- They haven't figured out that the risk preference of someone diversified across 100 startups is incompatible with theirs, and they won't push back as much against moon-or-bust strategies.
- They have the highest fluid to crystalized intelligence ratios of their life, giving them an advantage competing in novel areas where there is no preexisting knowledge, like enterprise sales. ;)
I started with: “How many unicorns were founded by people in their 30s? The biggest example I can think of is Larry Ellison” but it was easy to come up with so many more examples: Benioff, Reed Hastings, Bezos, Reid Hoffman.
Of course there are many examples of billionaires who founded companies in their 20s as well (Box, Dropbox, Airbnb, Stripe)… intuitively, I think there are a lot of factors (familial obligations being near the top, ahead of American “genius” bias) that tilt the scales towards younger founders.
"While I loved the free-money era as an entrepreneur, honestly the mal-investment is absurd and we need a cleansing of the charlatans in the tech industry. VCs are an area that needs to massively contract. "
This. 100% this.
Most founders are utterly ferrets having seizures and unfathomably out of their depth. The VCs are populated by former founders at the long tail of the Peter Principle.
> .. like that story to mimic Gates and Zuckerberg. In reality 99% of 20 year old CEOs that are handed millions of dollars are fucking idiots and nightmares to work for, lacking any professional and managerial experience ..
You forgot to include Steve Jobs in your examples. But were these guys not actual nightmares to work for? Apparently this is not a red flag at all.
I irrationally want this to be true because I have an unreasonable amount of anger for how much a16z put into Adam Neumann's Flow. Neumann destroyed billions in value at WeWork, then used essentially hostage tactics to walk away with about a billion, and he still got a16z to invest $350 million in Flow.
I've been following Flow news fairly closely, and it always sounds like tons of fluffy BS to me, same as the new-agey BS that permeated WeWork. If the best example Neumann can come up with about building a sense of "community" is that you get to fix your own toilet, can't wait to see this, and a16z's $350 million, crash and burn. I think I might even be at the very least impressed if Neumann manages to destroy a ton of a16z's money and still pocket tens of millions or so.
I joined in Poland and now use it when traveling around the USA.
It's great. I used to work at Microsoft and I loved that I could travel around the world and work from offices all over. That was awesome for creativity. Now our startup can do that, thanks to WeWork.
I don't know Adam Neumann's story. I do know my own though, and know that when you have success, watch your back, people will come with daggers.
I wouldn't judge someone who built something great, for making a billion dollars. You never know what kind of daggers in the back he took. I for one look forward to seeing what he builds next.
> I have an unreasonable amount of anger for how much a16z put into Adam Neumann's Flow.
Why so angry? I'm interested in the idea behind flow because it is nontraditional in the American building sense. If I understand the idea, I think providing community is a really good one. There is a lot of loneliness and we know that when seniors move into senior housing they love it. Most young adults love college dorms. So why not have that for everyone else? You do have to contrast this with the "projects" which also tried to develop community but failed I guess, maybe because economic opportunities were not included.
How did he destroy billions in value? He created the company and spun it up very effectively before being done in by run away valuations -- thank Masayoshi Son who is also a bit of a cowboy. The hostage tactics went both ways..
> same as the new-agey BS that permeated WeWork.
The thing is, this worked great for WeWork. Neumann successfully hyped it up into a global brand. The company still exists. People still enjoy using it. Some people like new-agey community vibes apparently, why is that bad? Apple wouldn't be Apple without some Steve Jobs mystique to capture the popular imagination either. These are lifestyle brands.
You could just work from a crummy McDonalds or your bedroom, nobody really needs a coworking space. Vibes are actually worth something.
> I think I might even be at the very least impressed if Neumann manages to destroy a ton of a16z's money and still pocket tens of millions or so.
I like how there are lots of stories on HN about founders who assume disproportionate risk getting completely screwed by investors and end up with nothing -- yet a guy who is a little bit more savvy is so easily painted as a villain. Ha.
A16Z has an awful reputation in crypto circles. They're considered a mercenary VC and there's a dominant assumption that if A16Z has led a round, they'll likely do an "airdrop" or similar token generation event just so they can sell their own tokens and get exit liquidity.
Yes, I've been preaching the same thing. The era of free money is over (for now). There is going to be a sea change in how investors - and more importantly founders - need to think about business. Founders will need to tighten their belts (age of austerity) and think hard about profitability. Timelines may need to be stretched out to get there. This is ultimately good for founders as it creates a laser focus on building real MVPs that can scale.
What does it say about this entire industry if it seems like all of this supposed disruptive, revolutionary, making-the-world-a-better-place activity seems to be going away with a simple move from the Fed?
The last wave of "unicorns" has been hardly "disruptive" in the positive sense of the word. If most of them were to disappear, my life would just be a little more cumbersome, but it won't change in any material way.
DoorDash is nice, but restaurants delivered food before that too. Uber is nice, but it's barely better than the taxis it replaced - at least in my city. Airbnb is a good option, but if it were to disappear, I'll just do what I always did - get a hotel room.
Considering that it tooks tens of billions of dollars to create businesses that were at best "nice to have", I have to wonder what's "disruptive" about any of this stuff.
You can get 4% on treasuries. It’s amazing how the whole startup game and VC ecosystem doesn’t absolutely trounce that considering the risk and effort everyone is applying.
If people are concerned about a16z they should be more concerned about Softbank.
Softbank followed the same strategy except they are in serious debt. I think at some point they could be forced into liquidation and it will drive the second leg down for the tech market.
I disagree. SoftBank isn’t raising new funds. It doesn’t have a functioning mouthpiece [1]. Andreessen is still taken seriously as an investor and thought leader, despite its abysmal record.
Not mentioned in the thread - a lot of VC capital is now going to be tied up in follow-on investments to keep their zombie investments alive a few more years.
So a lot of the "dry powder" left in VC is not so dry.
> web3 is dead, and now that we've had the super bowl ads phase of the hype cycle, there just isn't another wave of greater fools coming to pump up prices and end the crypto winter.
This explains the mania that used to be present on forums like this one about two years ago, billions (and tens of billions) of dollars were on the line if the people involved had managed to pull it off (i.e. to find even greater fouls).
Another relevant tweet from the same thread:
> a16z was early and all-in on crypto. Their first $300m crypto fund, invested at the start of the bubble, was reported to have generated eye-popping returns, which they parlayed into raising and investing $7B+ more in crypto funds in a giant double-or-nothing bet
I can’t speak to the specifics of a16z’s funds so take this a very broad generalisation, not a direct answer to your specific question.
When a VC firm says they have a “$500M fund”, what that often means is they have $500M of funds at call. The LPs (investors in the fund) don’t immediately put all that money into a pot that sits there waiting to be deployed. They just agree to make it available as called. In previous downturns those commitments have suddenly become a lot less committed when the fund tries to call them in. So, again generally speaking, there is no pot of cash lying around to be returned. They only called it when it was needed to close a deal at which point it was immediately spent.
As for “assets under management”, you’d probably want to try and read some fine print in how it’s calculated. A fund might try a slight of hand to include the previous “committed” number to pad it and make it look larger than it is. If so, see previous point re returning that. The rest is going to be the current valuation of deployed capital. But that’s a questionable number even in the best of times, and we are not in the best of times. It’s mostly tied up in illiquid private companies and so what there is to return depends on if, when, and for how much they can exit those positions.
Let's take a $5B growth fund. Let's say over 7 years they deployed all $5B of that fund into 100 companies. When you say collapse what do you mean? Do you mean all 100 companies are worthless to acquirers? In what time range? In those 7 years, a16z would have earned 2% revenue ($100M) per year to cover operations. If there fund failed to produce ANY return, they just wouldn't get any 20% carry and their investors money would be completely be lost. For example Stanford's endowment fund would have a minor dent in it for those 7 years.
PE/VC funds rarely collapse. They usually fail to produce returns, people leave, and then they cease to raise their next fund.
That depends on the details of the "collapse". If they outright went bankrupt then yeah we'd be looking at their equity stakes getting auctioned off by a bankruptcy court. If it was possible for all their investors to pull their money from the fund then they'd have to sell those stakes, or at least sell something, at market rate within perhaps a handful of days, which might be even worse. More likely there are restrictive terms on when people can withdraw from those funds and how much, which ought to limit the possibility of a quick death spiral; more likely you'll see big investors negotiating special terms, and a "lost decade" style stagnation (at least on paper) rather than a plummet.
In theory there's no effect on the company until they come to raise more money. (I mean, their stocks are worth less, and that might make it harder to retain talent if their stock options are now worthless, but that's industry-wide at this point). Companies who have enough to make it to IPO are basically fine (although it's also not a great time to IPO). But raising money privately on a "down round" is very difficult (although again, if it's an industry-wide downturn that might change things) and commonly you see companies in that situation using tricks to juice their valuation (e.g. offering a high liquidation preference to the new investor so that their headline valuation stays high).
No, one of those dramatic things would happen, even in a worst-case scenario.
The worst case scenario for a venture fund (not A16Z specific) is that their future funds would be smaller and as a result they would need to make fewer investments and perhaps reduce the firm's headcount. Existing companies are not very affected.
There are also funds (secondary funds) in the business of buying entire portfolios of GPs in case of distress or fraud. Buying cents on the dollar in some instances.
Well, my question here is, is there any use case of web3 that has a viable business model or is the whole industry a case of "The Emperor's New Clothes" fueled by the VCs looking to lure the excess of cash around?
"Zero interest rate phenomena" sounds smart to non-econ people the way "cryptocurrency" sounds smart to non-tech people. The fact that a lot of people were making bad investments (apparently mostly in tech, since job growth is up in other sectors) had very little to do with the interest rate. Failure might come a bit quicker, but this is all just pure, unprocessed copium from a sector that routinely fails to duplicate its own magic.
Apple is on its third or fourth life depending on how you slice it. Microsoft is coming back strong. But Facebook and Netflix are getting lame and Amazon is turning into something other than an online market. Google has never had as profitable and revolutionary of a product as search depending on how you rate Android. I doubt Apple gets a fifth life or Microsoft a third.
Meanwhile, the rest of the economy continues to do OK even without "zero interest rates." And interest rates didn't trigger the tech stock crash in 2000 or the general recession in 2008.
I understand that they're trying to say "people will do anything to get a return." But isn't that always true? Maybe more people will park their money in bonds. But people will look for a return that beats inflation because most people don't borrow money directly from the fed and most of the commercial rates haven't gone up that much.
I dunno, these people are chronically full of shit.
As much as the thread is interesting, the author is mentioning the most important point in the end - VC's operated are looking for commission. They will get massive commission from the money already committed to them. and some commissions from startups. They can't lose.
A lower interest rate on bonds may mean LPs allocate more money to VC funds, but the bulk of A16Z’s fund is surely not people who will all pull out their money and put it into bonds if rates go up a bit.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but the only affect a rise in rates could have is to reduce the amount of funds raised going forward? Is that even significant for VC funds?
VCs invest in companies that typically won’t make big profits for 10 years or so. At zero rates, the market doesn’t care if it gets its money today or in ten years. At 5%, the 10 year money is worth 60 cents. That means all of those hypothetical companies are worth 40% less, but it still costs about the same to build them.
you need to think 2nd order effects: VCs need mega exits to make returns, which usually are blockbuster IPOs. Higher rates will crash quite a lot of high-growth stocks making IPOs less appealing for investors, which messes up with A16z business model of exiting via IPOs.
Wouldn’t a16z get preferential returns where even if a firm does a down round, a16z still ends up getting a return on invested cash at the cost to employees/founders?
I remember a Silicon Valley historian / older generation entrepreneur was speculating whether the entire environment of this area was a product of 2 things:
-- low interest rates
-- favorable capital gains rates
And any ebb/flow to that could dry up what we take as granted about the circumstances that produce the VC, startup, tech landscape we have been accustomed to.
At the end of the day it was never the VC's money at risk, it was the LP's.
If the investments make less, the investors in the VCs get less. Unless there is a series of redemption clauses that trigger fire sales of illiquid investments, there wont be a big bang moment.
Interesting thread, wonder if that was the internal backdrop for the decision to deploy their biggest deal ever in Adam Newman's new venture (which has several folks scratching their heads).
Rates are like inverse temperature. When its cold (high rates) economic reactions slow down or stop. When its lukewarm (an activation threshold rate) interesting stuff might happen [0]. When its too hot (low rates) the primordial soup burns to ashes.
[0] its a might not a will happen because invention and adoption of science and technology have an external element that can't be "faked till it is actually made".
[+] [-] monero-xmr|3 years ago|reply
All of VC is trying to make a product that looks attractive to public markets. VCs are in sales and public relations.
The most obvious signal of this is how they continually select a college dropout or 20-something as a “genius founder”. There are rare examples of this happening but a much more logical play is someone who has worked in their industry for 10+ years and made a lot of connections. The invention of the “dropout genius” was because public market investors like that story to mimic Gates and Zuckerberg. In reality 99% of 20 year old CEOs that are handed millions of dollars are fucking idiots and nightmares to work for, lacking any professional and managerial experience, plus the “anointed one” marking giving them unearned authority.
While I loved the free-money era as an entrepreneur, honestly the mal-investment is absurd and we need a cleansing of the charlatans in the tech industry. VCs are an area that needs to massively contract.
[+] [-] miohtama|3 years ago|reply
I believe this has more to do with American fondness of exceptional individualism and American dream, as media likes these stories.
[+] [-] whatshisface|3 years ago|reply
- They are willing to work long hours and sacrifice the life they mostly don't have yet for a 1% chance of success.
- They haven't figured out that the risk preference of someone diversified across 100 startups is incompatible with theirs, and they won't push back as much against moon-or-bust strategies.
- They have the highest fluid to crystalized intelligence ratios of their life, giving them an advantage competing in novel areas where there is no preexisting knowledge, like enterprise sales. ;)
[+] [-] allenleee|3 years ago|reply
Most of them are driven by hype and market trends, leading them to overgeneralize and make inaccurate predictions.
They swayed by the latest buzz in the industry and invest in companies that may not have a sustainable business model.
[+] [-] photonbeam|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] smugma|3 years ago|reply
Of course there are many examples of billionaires who founded companies in their 20s as well (Box, Dropbox, Airbnb, Stripe)… intuitively, I think there are a lot of factors (familial obligations being near the top, ahead of American “genius” bias) that tilt the scales towards younger founders.
[+] [-] zeruch|3 years ago|reply
This. 100% this.
Most founders are utterly ferrets having seizures and unfathomably out of their depth. The VCs are populated by former founders at the long tail of the Peter Principle.
[+] [-] misja111|3 years ago|reply
You forgot to include Steve Jobs in your examples. But were these guys not actual nightmares to work for? Apparently this is not a red flag at all.
[+] [-] unknown|3 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] __derek__|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] daniel-cussen|3 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] hn_throwaway_99|3 years ago|reply
I've been following Flow news fairly closely, and it always sounds like tons of fluffy BS to me, same as the new-agey BS that permeated WeWork. If the best example Neumann can come up with about building a sense of "community" is that you get to fix your own toilet, can't wait to see this, and a16z's $350 million, crash and burn. I think I might even be at the very least impressed if Neumann manages to destroy a ton of a16z's money and still pocket tens of millions or so.
[+] [-] weatherlite|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] paxys|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lazzlazzlazz|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] breck|3 years ago|reply
I joined in Poland and now use it when traveling around the USA.
It's great. I used to work at Microsoft and I loved that I could travel around the world and work from offices all over. That was awesome for creativity. Now our startup can do that, thanks to WeWork.
I don't know Adam Neumann's story. I do know my own though, and know that when you have success, watch your back, people will come with daggers.
I wouldn't judge someone who built something great, for making a billion dollars. You never know what kind of daggers in the back he took. I for one look forward to seeing what he builds next.
[+] [-] theGnuMe|3 years ago|reply
Why so angry? I'm interested in the idea behind flow because it is nontraditional in the American building sense. If I understand the idea, I think providing community is a really good one. There is a lot of loneliness and we know that when seniors move into senior housing they love it. Most young adults love college dorms. So why not have that for everyone else? You do have to contrast this with the "projects" which also tried to develop community but failed I guess, maybe because economic opportunities were not included.
Is Flow based on the idea of a Kibbutz?
[+] [-] recuter|3 years ago|reply
> same as the new-agey BS that permeated WeWork.
The thing is, this worked great for WeWork. Neumann successfully hyped it up into a global brand. The company still exists. People still enjoy using it. Some people like new-agey community vibes apparently, why is that bad? Apple wouldn't be Apple without some Steve Jobs mystique to capture the popular imagination either. These are lifestyle brands.
You could just work from a crummy McDonalds or your bedroom, nobody really needs a coworking space. Vibes are actually worth something.
> I think I might even be at the very least impressed if Neumann manages to destroy a ton of a16z's money and still pocket tens of millions or so.
I like how there are lots of stories on HN about founders who assume disproportionate risk getting completely screwed by investors and end up with nothing -- yet a guy who is a little bit more savvy is so easily painted as a villain. Ha.
[+] [-] spaceman_2020|3 years ago|reply
Sad to see a name like A16Z reduced to this.
[+] [-] EMM_386|3 years ago|reply
It really is.
These ICOs were essentially considered "free money". Mint a coin, put some power behind it, profit.
This isn't a business, it's a get rich quick scheme.
[+] [-] anonu|3 years ago|reply
Finally, one of my favorite exhibits of the excesses of near-ZIRP are right here: https://web.archive.org/web/20221027180943/https://www.sequo... << glorifying SBF article on the Sequoia Cap site. This is the very definition of irrational exuberance.
[+] [-] Apocryphon|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] spaceman_2020|3 years ago|reply
DoorDash is nice, but restaurants delivered food before that too. Uber is nice, but it's barely better than the taxis it replaced - at least in my city. Airbnb is a good option, but if it were to disappear, I'll just do what I always did - get a hotel room.
Considering that it tooks tens of billions of dollars to create businesses that were at best "nice to have", I have to wonder what's "disruptive" about any of this stuff.
[+] [-] benjaminwootton|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rwmj|3 years ago|reply
TBH Andreessen Horowitz has been the redest of flags for a long time, spouting all their nonsense about crypto and "web3".
[+] [-] blindriver|3 years ago|reply
Softbank followed the same strategy except they are in serious debt. I think at some point they could be forced into liquidation and it will drive the second leg down for the tech market.
[+] [-] JumpCrisscross|3 years ago|reply
I disagree. SoftBank isn’t raising new funds. It doesn’t have a functioning mouthpiece [1]. Andreessen is still taken seriously as an investor and thought leader, despite its abysmal record.
[1] https://www.ft.com/content/02a249fb-c1ca-4947-a324-d8fd6c2fe...
[+] [-] steveBK123|3 years ago|reply
So a lot of the "dry powder" left in VC is not so dry.
[+] [-] paganel|3 years ago|reply
This explains the mania that used to be present on forums like this one about two years ago, billions (and tens of billions) of dollars were on the line if the people involved had managed to pull it off (i.e. to find even greater fouls).
Another relevant tweet from the same thread:
> a16z was early and all-in on crypto. Their first $300m crypto fund, invested at the start of the bubble, was reported to have generated eye-popping returns, which they parlayed into raising and investing $7B+ more in crypto funds in a giant double-or-nothing bet
[+] [-] cgb223|3 years ago|reply
Do they fire sell major chunks of companies to whomever buys it or how does that game theory out?
What impact does it have on the companies themselves?
[+] [-] glenngillen|3 years ago|reply
When a VC firm says they have a “$500M fund”, what that often means is they have $500M of funds at call. The LPs (investors in the fund) don’t immediately put all that money into a pot that sits there waiting to be deployed. They just agree to make it available as called. In previous downturns those commitments have suddenly become a lot less committed when the fund tries to call them in. So, again generally speaking, there is no pot of cash lying around to be returned. They only called it when it was needed to close a deal at which point it was immediately spent.
As for “assets under management”, you’d probably want to try and read some fine print in how it’s calculated. A fund might try a slight of hand to include the previous “committed” number to pad it and make it look larger than it is. If so, see previous point re returning that. The rest is going to be the current valuation of deployed capital. But that’s a questionable number even in the best of times, and we are not in the best of times. It’s mostly tied up in illiquid private companies and so what there is to return depends on if, when, and for how much they can exit those positions.
[+] [-] mbesto|3 years ago|reply
Let's take a $5B growth fund. Let's say over 7 years they deployed all $5B of that fund into 100 companies. When you say collapse what do you mean? Do you mean all 100 companies are worthless to acquirers? In what time range? In those 7 years, a16z would have earned 2% revenue ($100M) per year to cover operations. If there fund failed to produce ANY return, they just wouldn't get any 20% carry and their investors money would be completely be lost. For example Stanford's endowment fund would have a minor dent in it for those 7 years.
PE/VC funds rarely collapse. They usually fail to produce returns, people leave, and then they cease to raise their next fund.
[+] [-] lmm|3 years ago|reply
In theory there's no effect on the company until they come to raise more money. (I mean, their stocks are worth less, and that might make it harder to retain talent if their stock options are now worthless, but that's industry-wide at this point). Companies who have enough to make it to IPO are basically fine (although it's also not a great time to IPO). But raising money privately on a "down round" is very difficult (although again, if it's an industry-wide downturn that might change things) and commonly you see companies in that situation using tricks to juice their valuation (e.g. offering a high liquidation preference to the new investor so that their headline valuation stays high).
[+] [-] snowmaker|3 years ago|reply
The worst case scenario for a venture fund (not A16Z specific) is that their future funds would be smaller and as a result they would need to make fewer investments and perhaps reduce the firm's headcount. Existing companies are not very affected.
[+] [-] grey-area|3 years ago|reply
The valuation on all their equity was speculation, it is not based on earnings.
[+] [-] dam_skippy|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] moralestapia|3 years ago|reply
Same thing that happened with FTX/FTT, they sublimate.
[+] [-] dakial1|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] garbagecoder|3 years ago|reply
Apple is on its third or fourth life depending on how you slice it. Microsoft is coming back strong. But Facebook and Netflix are getting lame and Amazon is turning into something other than an online market. Google has never had as profitable and revolutionary of a product as search depending on how you rate Android. I doubt Apple gets a fifth life or Microsoft a third.
Meanwhile, the rest of the economy continues to do OK even without "zero interest rates." And interest rates didn't trigger the tech stock crash in 2000 or the general recession in 2008.
I understand that they're trying to say "people will do anything to get a return." But isn't that always true? Maybe more people will park their money in bonds. But people will look for a return that beats inflation because most people don't borrow money directly from the fed and most of the commercial rates haven't gone up that much.
I dunno, these people are chronically full of shit.
[+] [-] JamesAdir|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] alxmng|3 years ago|reply
A lower interest rate on bonds may mean LPs allocate more money to VC funds, but the bulk of A16Z’s fund is surely not people who will all pull out their money and put it into bonds if rates go up a bit.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but the only affect a rise in rates could have is to reduce the amount of funds raised going forward? Is that even significant for VC funds?
[+] [-] jxf|3 years ago|reply
How does it do really well? By having a very profitable in-demand public IPO.
How do you get macroeconomically favorable in-demand IPOs? Lots of capital looking for alternative returns.
What creates willingness to consider alternative returns? Among other things, reductions in the risk-free return rate obtained by bonds.
High bond rates reduce the demand for alternative returns, which reduces the demand for IPO participation, which in turn affects VC returns.
[+] [-] cameldrv|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ak_111|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bushbaba|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Nowado|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kepler1|3 years ago|reply
-- low interest rates
-- favorable capital gains rates
And any ebb/flow to that could dry up what we take as granted about the circumstances that produce the VC, startup, tech landscape we have been accustomed to.
[+] [-] blitzar|3 years ago|reply
If the investments make less, the investors in the VCs get less. Unless there is a series of redemption clauses that trigger fire sales of illiquid investments, there wont be a big bang moment.
[+] [-] nsoldiac|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] college_physics|3 years ago|reply
[0] its a might not a will happen because invention and adoption of science and technology have an external element that can't be "faked till it is actually made".