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by michaelochurch
4200 days ago
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As much as I wanted to believe in this vision, I've realized that the sole purpose of a so called Venture Capital Company is to provide an investment upon which they expect a large return. I don't believe that to be at odds with what we want to see. I think that the VCs would see better profits if they went back to Real Technology. As an asset class, VC has been underperforming for more than a decade, and the funding of Spiegels and Duplans is the reason why. The problem is that some of the investors care more about becoming celebrities and "virality" than the laborious process of building real technology companies and getting rich slowly. Venture capital isn't more broken or evil than any other industry. What happens in any organization or ecosystem is that, over time, the influential players end up being the ones who are good at playing the politics, not the ones who are good at their jobs or ethically sound. The ones who get to the top are those who value nothing other than personal advancement, because caring about anything else would slow down their political ascent. In the case of VC, there are a lot of good investors, even now. I wouldn't be surprised if the good ones outnumber the bad ones. The problem is that the ones who become most influential are the ones who seek risk for its own sake, focus on "virality" rather than lasting value creation, and engage in collusion that hurts the ecosystem immensely (and that would be illegal on any public equity market). |
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Investors care about making a return on their investment, plain and simple, so they invest in companies that resemble other successful companies. Silicon Valley investors saw the success of Facebook and Twitter and they want to replicate that success.
Not only that, but social network companies look like good investments because they're relatively inexpensive to build, and signs of their eventual success or failure show up at an extremely early stage.
The problem isn't that VCs are evil or stupid or fame-hungry or conspiratorial. The "problem" is that social media companies still look like good investments. You could accuse VCs of being uninspired and unoriginal, trying to repeat their last big success over and over, but that's how it works. And as long as college kids are building the social media apps that get initial traction with other college kids, they're going to get funded.
Complaining won't do anything. As long as social media looks like a good investment (i.e., until it deflates or until something better comes along), VCs will continue to milk it. Once it becomes a bad investment, they'll all go chasing the ball to wherever its headed next.
I agree, it's unfortunate that the money isn't being funneled into something more innovative or meaningful. Rap music annotations and disappearing photos and a website that helps you rent out your spare bedroom are being heralded as some of our greatest tech success stories. Frankly, that's pathetic.