| >, but that's because nobody talks about their flops. The KPCB flops in "green tech, clean energy, etc" were widely reported.[1] Also, the VC firm DFJ and Tim Draper in particular were laughingstocks for investing in the Theranos scam because they didn't do proper due diligence. >Fred Wilson [...] was part of Twitter's clueless board, the one that didn't think it was important to buy Instagram? Is there a source that says it was Fred Wilson who blocked the acquisition of Instagram? The story I read was that both Jack Dorsey of Twitter and Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook were courting Instagram at the same time. Jack offered ~$500 million (all in Twitter stock). Mark offered ~$736 million ($300 million of that in cash). Basically, Facebook had the more enticing offer. In 2012, Twitter wasn't generating any profits and didn't have any excess money in the bank to include any cash component to their bid. On the other hand, Facebook was already profitable for 3 years and had ~$4 billion in cash in the bank even before the IPO in May 2012. Having a stock that was backed by real profits and a war chest of cash lets Facebook make more attractive acquisition offers. [1] https://www.google.com/search?q=kpcb+green+tech+lost+money |