Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by rchaud 1408 days ago
There are few industries as cynical as venture capital. They won't ever invest in projects explicitly designed for public welfare because "the economics don't work" or "the innovation isn't there".

But they will invest eye-watering sums into financing student newspapers for the middle-aged (Substack) or 'turn your car into a public taxi' businesses, knowing that 90% of them won't amount to anything.

2 comments

> There are few industries as cynical as venture capital. They won't ever invest in projects explicitly designed for public welfare because "the economics don't work"

As oposed to which industries exactly?

"industry" wasn't the right word, as VCs don't produce anything. As investment philosophies go, it's very cynical.
8200+ points but you don't acknowledge the fact VCs are legally bound to invest LPs money for economic returns.
Well then it's unfortunate that our economy is structured to deliver economic returns to early stage investors that are grossly disproportionate to the company's actual performance in the market.

Flow will be no different. They will need to hire thousands D's of people with low interest VC cash and expand to 10 countries in order to deliver the same profitability as say a mid sized law firm. .

Never saw an ad for WeWork. Did see them with $3 sq/ft office space in Oakland renting for $12. Softbank gave him an incentive to blow it up, thus he did. Cleared a few billion in cash and will probably be back to buy the remnants of WeWork and rights to Jared Leto's sequel. A real meanie though.