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by chamblin 4641 days ago
This disdain for "common" investment is over the top.

A much bigger concern than the potential for poor decisions by individuals is the creation of financial instruments that are, by government fiat, only available to an elite group of institutional investors and the otherwise-wealthy.
1 comments
cowsandmilk 4641 days ago
> This disdain for "common" investment is over the top.

Completely agree. After pointing out that the institutional investors are clueless and lose to the market, he then says that only the little guys should stay out of the startup space. Honestly, many of the reliable indicators for Venture Capital are available to the public (eg past success). No reason to keep the little guy out.

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cowsandmilk 4641 days ago
Expanding a bit, HBR argues:

> pouring more capital into VC has historically led to lower returns

Why this is unexpected is beyond me. More money should mean more competition. He's essentially arguing that we should allow VCs to keep exclusivity on the market because historically their returns have gone down as exclusivity has decreased.

There may be argument that the startup market may have more scams than the public markets and so on, but the author at HBR is not arguing that. He's arguing that a natural function of opening up a market is a bad thing because it provides less returns to the existing players.

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