[pdeuchler]

1) Being pedantic real quick, it's a ~2x win. And yeah, it's not the 100x most VCs dream about, but it's still a heck of a lot better than an embarrassing 0x loss after your founder shouts his billion dollar aspirations from the rooftops. The important thing here isn't that VC's are making money, it's that they're using an elitist social circle to absolve losses. "Too connected to fail", if you will.

2) How does this make it any better? What you're essentially saying here is instead of investors paying themselves cash they're just shuffling shares of stock from one investment vehicle to another... if this is true then in some cases investors are actually increasing their share in AngelList simply by, in your own words ("1x isn't making anybody happy"), making a failed investment. That doesn't seem above board to me.

3) If you're honestly trying to compare late 90's era Google with ProductHunt then I think that proves my point more than anything I can say myself

[birken]

Do you think the behavior of these companies could possibly be explained by doing what they think is in their own selfish best interest instead of somehow using "elitist social circles" to "absolve losses"? And who is absolving the losses anyways? Wouldn't some of the people in the "elitist social circles" be investors in AL but not PH and be upset that these "losses" were being inflicted upon them? Why wouldn't they use their elite social clout to stop it?

Anecdote time: I've personally seen a few startups that were failing attempt to sell themselves to the startup I was somewhat senior in. I interviewed and chatted with founders of the startups that were trying to get acquired. My meetings were not interfered with by the VCs or the angels or anybody else. They are far far too busy to care about every minute detail of what goes on at their portfolio companies. Had we ever gone through with one of the acquisitions (which we never did when I was there), my guess is the board would have tried very hard to convince us not to do it, as an acquisition has a much higher chance of going wrong than going well and can be a huge distraction.

[pj_mukh]

It's only in hindsight that 90's era Google is an "obvious win". It was "just another Search engine with a bunch of Stanford buddies for investors" in the 90's and probably would've been called so on HN.

Its seems to me that convincing a bunch of people to part with their money for your idea and then relentlessly trying to execute on it (as PH's founder seems to have done) is very meritorious.

Some investments are clearly made to friends, but you aren't convincing any investor to NOT invest in their friends who they think are great, personally. Now if only there was a process to democratise this discovery more....

P.S: I was referring to AngelList in the end there.