[wpietri]

Sadly, as far as I know, it's impossible to short startups, but I wish it were otherwise.

After I made a comment hear last year about prediction markets and startups [1] a VC got in touch with me to kick the idea around. To my mind one of SV's big problems is the high level of hype and herd-following. It's a certainty money is getting wasted on fashionable ideas of the day (e.g., "Uber for X"), and some sort of informational corrective could get VCs better returns. But we couldn't figure out a sustainable way to fund it.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17889249

[davidivadavid]

I've toyed with the idea of building a website where you can build mock portfolios of startups based on e.g. Crunchbase data (I'm not sure if there's enough data publicly available to do it nicely). You could add bells and whistles such as shorting, and gradually transition it to use real dollars instead of fake money.

[atomical]

How would you define failure in this case? As we've seen from Uber's IPO the valuations aren't accurate. There is little price discovery to be had in private markets.

The company could also hang on for a long time before being acquired or going out of business.