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by randome3889 5208 days ago
You clearly don't understand VC or Private Equity very well. 15 mil is chump change for Sequoia. Sure they would rather not lose it but 43 million is not a "huge amount of cash" in the VC world. They probably just got back a 1x or 2x return and that is about it.
1 comments
rhizome 5208 days ago
Which is why buddy exits are such a problem: there's so much money in the greater pool that they can hand out life-changing cash on a whim to people who might not deserve it as much as others. Sure, life isn't fair, but I'd rather people didn't pretend otherwise.
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freshhawk 5208 days ago
Fairness is less of a problem than VC's treating their investor money as a slush fund to dole out to their friends.

Doesn't everyone know that it's "more about who you know that what you do"? Even on HN most people don't pretend otherwise unless it's the all too prevalent press releases and astroturfing posts/comments.

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rhizome 5206 days ago
No, everybody doesn't know. Why do you think the conventional wisdom doesn't reflect that it's a buddy game rather than a meritocracy? Why is the word "meritocracy" ever even mentioned? Is it just a red herring thrown out by successful people to keep the masses suffering?
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freshhawk 5206 days ago
I think we disagree on what the conventional wisdom is.

I have never heard anyone successful talking about the state of things refer to a meritocracy actually existing. Lot's of comments about how some method is more of a meritocracy or closer to this hypothetical ideal. Talk to anyone about nearly any business and the advice is to make good connections. The "it's not what you know, it's who you know" is such an old saying that it's a cliche. It's "a saying". It's conventional wisdom.

The aphorism "build a better mousetrap, and the world will beat a path to your door" has only been used, during my lifetime (30 years), as an example of naivete. You also need good design and marketing and the right connections. To me, this is the conventional wisdom.

Nothing about money in the western world is a meritocracy, I honestly can't find anyone serious trying to say it is. Especially with all the number crunching lately concerned with the growing class divide in the US.

Am I ignorant? Outside of some kind of Glenn Beck style "woooo America! Fuck Yeah!" pundit that have I completely missed a meme or school of thought that is claiming a meritocracy exists (even though that's objectively wrong)?

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