VC

trumpdiego

##Top value pick stocks, first two are only $6, that's like half a handy at your dumpster: ##1. $Htz (Hertz) - Ackman has fucked me before, but $2B seems low here, if they put in some AI kiosks instead of having to deal with low iq front desk clerk and homie getting his ID out of his pocket for 15minutes, they'll be golden. ##2. $PTLO (Portillos) - poors need cheap food, and this is poors food that is delicious, all time lows, I'm in for the strategic turnaround. Also working at wendys gets tiring, I need a new crowd. ##3. $Chym (Chime) - talk about IPO gone bust, this is what happens to your precious IPO after everybody sold, the IPO lockup isnt even here yet (Nov) and this thing is less than most VC's bought in for ($30). Poors need banks and loans in the near future. Thank you for coming to my value stock talk. Hope some of these plays tickle your balls and you share me in bagholding for the next decade.

phatelectribe

It’s going to die. Just look at Bandier - tons of VC money, loads of influencers, heavy marketing, or one locations. They’re now bust and trying to fire sell the IP for pennies on the dollar. This market is saturated, there’s too much competition and the customer base is fleeting. At the low end shein is clearing up. At the high end, Alo and Vuori now are the hot thing. Lulu is in the terrible position of being the expensive brand that is mid and seems dated.

WetJetCrew

No way you are comparing a dinosaur to the new kid on the block. Although there have been some very strong blockbusters. Overall attendance at movie theaters has dropped. While VC, Wall street and retail investors are all flocking to the new shiny toy of "AI powered shit on a plate". Wishing you the best

goober2341

The Oracle deal with OpenAI for $300 billion caused the entire market to pump, but OpenAI is burning through VC cash as is. Where the fuck are they going to get the money? Not to mention the power grid can't handle the increased demand and there's been zero proof that the glorified chatbot they're calling "AI" is able to significantly boost corporate productivity. It's absolutely insane.

moorhound

OPEN 3 days ago? Trash. Not selling that beforehand took some balls. OPEN now that Rabois is back, right before rates cuts and an American credit extravaganza is about to begin? Very different. Real estate has always been a territoried industry in the US. That makes it extremely fragmented; 1.5 million real estate agents working for 300k+ brokerages. Even counting mega firms with over 20k total agents, there are like ten. No one can consolidate market share, because all these agents and companies are constantly at war with each other. I can see, with a massive amount of tech industry brainpower and a fuckton of VC capital, a path for a company with a radical modernization plan to usurp the industry by taking out most of the human elements. I sure as hell didn't think Opendoor was capable of pulling anything like it off, especially not without the right brains and the aforementioned money. But now, I can kind of see a path, and at the end of the path is a *fuckin donko amount of money*. There's $2T worth of houses sold each year, and you can hog a lot of that pie and keep more of the margin with robo agents.

Daforce1

Agreed, I’m a VC that is active in the cybersecurity space, and a ton of money is going to be made in this area way before ipos

z0r0

As someone who is has their finger on the pulse of cyber security, the real money is made on acquisition by VC's, and then by the market when an acquisition doesn't alienate a customer base of a product that does well. Companies like PANW, CSGO, and cloud providers etc. are just going to buy the obvious winners before they IPO. I suspect that GOOGL is going to do quite well in the future with it's historical acquisitions of Mandiant, VirusTotal and most recently, Wiz. Let alone all of the AI tooling that they're putting out that's not half bad.

moorhound

~75% of the typical homebuyer demographic is still priced out; rate cuts are gonna keep prices inflating, so they won't help this a whole lot. As of now, Opendoor is still just a much-shitter version of Zillow. They finally figured out they have to use agents to get the groundwork done, and agents don't currently have much incentive to use the platform. But with the massive amount of backing that Rabois is likely to bring with him, OPEN can do the tech growth phase again and afford to lose money in order to gain market share. If they can figure out streamlined AI contract writing, that's cool too, but the main drivers for OPEN's future are gonna be gubment connections and massive amounts of VC capital funding rounds.

moorhound

I did what actual people that read can do and looked into the company's financials. It was, and as of now, still looks like a wet dog shit. They dumped over 35% of their inventory last quarter for a 23% gross profit increase, and almost all of that cash is restricted. A good chunk of their inventory (30+%) is sitting stale, which means they're probably shit houses they're gonna lose money on. The *only thing* that gives me faith in this company now going somewhere is Rabois coming back. He's a Silicon Valley VC OG; Stanford Law, Founder's Fund, Kholsa. His husband is the undersecretary for economic growth. Insane amounts of tech money and influence are going to float this turd.

moorhound

Even though I made money off of OPEN today, I loathe the fact that this stock went from a moron dipshit meme P&D buy to an actual viable growth route overnight with Rabois and his VC muscle coming back to the board. Now this is probably going to at least $35, and we have to deal with a bunch of smoothbrains considering themselves master trading geniuses because some bots on the internet saying "$OPEN your anoos" was enough for them to full-port into a penny stock and hit the lotto. WSB is solid proof that America is NOT a meritocracy. I like the money, but this feels gross.

AccountOfMyAncestors

Your practically a VC investor. Miss 98, hit 2 monster homers.

moorhound

The CEO doesn't matter, they could have gotten any chucklefuck. Rabois and Wu coming back the board are huge, however. These guys have *massive* VC investor pull.

Sandvicheater

OpenAI paying ORCL $300B for their cloud platform but many analyst and market commentators are saying what money does OpenAI have? They already burned through VC and MSFT cash and Daddy Nadella sure as hell ain't giving them another buck after all the toe stepping bullshit OpenAi pulled with creating their own linkedin, meddling in the windsurf acquisition, shares dilution at IPO and dozens of other shit MSFT has been putting up with Open AI lately.

hockeylife_21

Ahh pajeet VC, makes sense

Successful-Tea-5733

APO I think they are primed to grow because they have several elements to their business. VC but also acquisition and as the small caps do better companies like APO are in good position to acquire them. I could see them being the next BRK. Before you blast me, less than 5% of my portfolio is here, I am very heavy in index investing this is just a segment that I think could do well, but won't derail me if I'm wrong.

diveguy2

I've been selling on StubHub for over 20 years, and they used to be an innovative company that created value. Now they are complete garbage. Eric Baker was an original cofounder who was banished by his co-founder and early investors for being an unintelligent shithead shortly after launching the company in the early aughts. He went on to start Viagogo which was like a really, really crappy and unethical version of StubHub in Europe. I tried to work with them 15 years ago and it was one of the most poorly run organizations I have every encountered. Fast forward to March 2020--that's when Eric Baker and his investors closed on "buying back" StubHub from eBay for $4B. Great timing, Eric! Hope your IPO is timed equally well. StubHub screws sellers in the name of buyers but doesn't give a shit about buyers, evidenced by the multitude of past and current lawsuits against them for burning buyers and changing their guarantees on the fly, time and time again. Their "FanProtect Guarantee" amounts to "if you don't get your tickets 1 hour before the event, we'll give you a refund." Really? You mean you will give me my money back if you don't deliver the tickets I ordered? But I have to wait until an hour before the event to "activate" the "guarantee?" AWESOME. The company's primary goal is to make Eric Baker and his investors rich and he had no qualms destroying some of the good things about the company in the process. Standard VC/founder pump and dump IPO on unsuspecting retail investors. I hope they all crash and burn (they won't of course--he'll probably make a $500mil+ on the IPO).

FitAd9625

My only experience with Victory is directly with them. If you are buying though another broker I have no input. I think Schwab charges transaction fees for trading VC mutual funds.

zeromussc

I just enjoy whenever meme stocks blow up, and I kinda want to see the wildest and riskiest VC firm shit to collapse as well.

Sashamirae17

great . You’re right that EH deserves more attention — they’ve actually crossed the certification → commercialization line, which puts them ahead of Joby/Archer in some very tangible ways. First to market is not just a headline, it means real-world operational data, customer feedback, and revenue — all things Western players don’t have yet. That said, I think the reason Joby/Archer dominate discussion is less about fundamentals and more about *where the capital is*. U.S.-listed companies with strong VC/PE backing and visibility in the U.S. media naturally get amplified. EH also faces the “China discount,” where investors automatically assign more geopolitical/regulatory risk, regardless of the business progress. Your point on infrastructure/NIMBY is spot on — the regulatory environment in China is far more favorable, and that’s a massive edge. But investors still weigh the geopolitical risk higher than execution risk, which explains the valuation gap. So yeah, if someone is comfortable with the China exposure, EH looks like the stronger near-term execution bet. If not, Joby/Archer become more of a “U.S. regulatory/macro” bet despite the slower progress....

Soybeanrice

VC's dumping to retail. A tale as old as time.

M1-ADV

The real answer is that it’s not just one single thing. Bit of a politician’s answer I know, but diversification is the smartest move here and you may thank yourself, maybe not out of the gate, but definately down the road. Core Stability (50–60%) \- Dividend-focused equities, REITs, and/or possibly one residential rental property. \-This gives you a solid mix of compounding and vairly dependable cashflow. Growth / Opportunistic (10–20%) \- PE/VC fund type exposure, thematic ETFs (AI, clean energy, emerging tech), or a small-cap tilt. \- crypto index (if you don't already have exposure) These are long-term plays that come with higher volatility but potentially higher upside. Uncorrelated / Alternatives (20–30%) \- Hard assets like farmland, timber, or infrastructure etc... \- Systematic / commodity / quant funds (this is my fav) Designed to be inflation-protected and less correlated to equities. Liquidity Buffer (5–10%) \- High-yield savings or short-term bonds. Gives you flexibility, opportunity readiness, and peace of mind. TL;DR basically don’t drop the entire $500K into one bucket. Use it to balance out what you already have, diversify your income sources, smooth volatility, and ensure that part of the portfolio churns you off reliable cashflow while the rest compounds steadily over time. Follow that and you should be good to go..

WhiteRabbitSpecific

You’ve got a lot wrong here, and it shows you don’t really understand how SmallCap cleantech commercialization works. Let’s break it down: 1. Shell GameChanger It’s not “a 3-year program where everyone graduates.” Aduro entered in June 2022 under a 12-month, 6-stage program. Each stage had to be cleared to advance. Because they delivered, Shell extended it not once, but twice — to 36 months. Pending graduation this fall is the result of 3 years of Shell vetting and funding. Suggesting Shell burns 3 years of staff time and money for a “write-off” is naïve. 2. Vendors (Zeton & Siemens) Dismissing Zeton and Siemens as “just vendors” is disingenuous. Zeton builds modular pilots for majors worldwide — they don’t take on backyard science projects. Siemens integrating controls means the system is being built to industrial standards, not a lab bench toy. These aren’t endorsements, but they are validation that Aduro is building real, scalable tech. 3. Dilution Dilution isn’t a red flag, it’s how deep-tech funds progress. QuantumScape, your own example, diluted ~20% while burning billions with no traction. Aduro diluted ~40% but used it to deliver tangible milestones: R2 continuous runs, NGP build + commissioning, Siemens integration, and Shell GC & built out their CEP... One torched cash, the other bought real progress. 4. “Their product is their stock” Completely false. Their “product” is Hydrochemolytic™ technology, protected by 7 granted + 2 pending U.S. patents. The goal is licensing — not manufacturing widgets. Comparing it to a SaaS ERP app is apples to oranges. One can generate ARR in months, the other is tackling a $400B+ global recycling/energy problem that Shell and TotalEnergies themselves have failed to solve with pyrolysis. That's just one of the verticals as well, they have two others with massive TAM. 5. Institutions/VC Institutional ownership increased by ~432% in the last reporting period. Insiders still hold ~36%, which is extremely high for a microcap — that’s alignment, not a red flag, oddly enough you're focused on this and see it as a negative. Shell, TotalEnergies, GF, CleanFarms, Siemens, the other 5 unnamed billion dollar corporations in the CEP- these are strategic relationships that matter far more than a small VC cheque. Bottom line: Aduro didn’t “go public to fleece retail.” They went public to fund industrial technology that requires years of engineering and validation before revenue. That’s how every deep-tech cleantech company works. Writing it off as a pump and dump because you don’t understand the model isn’t analysis — it’s simplistic and short-sighted.

This-Manufacturer388

What smaller companies, the ones who are stunted at birth by the European business and VC environment? Well it is not working for Europe, because they have the least business friendly environment in the west.

LaggingIndicator

After you have fully funded your retirement, you should you excess on riskier bets. Options on companies with high conviction, real estate, VC, etc.

dansdansy

The book seems to be focused on the VC method, which is to scatter shot and double down on the few big winners. This works if you have a lot of liquidity and some insider knowledge but for the rest of us it's tough to pull off.

mvw2

Why? At this point, to the actual stockholder value of Tesla, a single pink slip would be preferable for the company. The reality is Elon is specifically harming the company by being linked to it. This move seems...odd. It feels like it's attempting to funnel assets out. There's no practical reason for it. There's no value to it. Elon's "brand identity" has very low value. You could literally force him out of the company and be better off today. So...why a $1T payout? They're not exactly flush with cash. Is this a way to pull money out of Tesla to VC some other project? Are they gutting Tesla through Elon?

North_Second_418

Sorry for the late response. Yes – I’m investing pre-IPO, since I work in VC. To give you a few names: in 2025 I invested (again) in **Groq, SkildAI and LambdaAI**. Groq and Lambda are both aiming for IPO in 2026 – though based on past experience, I expect delays or changes. The key for me is to stay consistent and keep investing regularly, especially when I feel I have an information edge. At this point, I only focus on **later-stage rounds with Tier-1 co-investors**. The biggest challenge is always **access**. It’s gotten a bit easier for me, but not always. For example, I missed Anthropic at the $14B valuation in 2023 simply because I was too slow. Another issue in pre-IPO investing is the **wrappers / cost layers**. Very rarely do you invest directly – usually it’s via an SPV, and often there are multiple layers, each taking a cut. That makes investors much less flexible.

theperezident94

Depends on the term sheet. A VC that owns 1% but manages to install 2 board members for a one-man startup, means that they get to own the vote on literally any decision.

TheLelouchLamperouge

Everyone thinks WSB is full of degens because of 0DTEs, but VC operates on the same principle. Throw tons of money at a plethora of garbage in small denominations, and the one bet that hits can be like a 100x play. The only difference is liquidity, prove me wrong.

skilliard7

So in the broader AI market, you have startups like OpenAI, Anthropic, X.AI, etc that are deeply unprofitable and burning cash. These generally rely on cloud providers for inference. You also got a lot of much smaller startups. Over half of VC funding this year is to AI startups. Broadcom sells more to larger tech companies, such as cloud providers, seeking custom chips to avoid depending on Nvidia and cut costs. The issue here is fierce competition. Even if AI keeps growing, you have Nvidia, Broadcom, AMD, Huawei, and others entering the market. If Broadcom grows, it comes at the expense of Nvidia, for example. That's the issue with 50-100x P/E valuations. It assumes that they will face no competition, that there will not be pressures on margins.

meshreplacer

OpenAI is burning through a shit ton of capital and needs new VC money to sustain it. They initiated a small private IPO where they are valuing OpenAI at 500billion because insiders are getting restless and want to unload some heavy bags to SoftBank etc.. Same entity that thought WeWork was an amazing investment. Eventually SoftBank etc.. will probably try to initiate an IPO in mid 2026 the problem is Will they be able to keep the charade long enough where they can exit with a profit before the music stops and they are left without the chair. That is to be determined. Look at Figma. A bunch of folks loaded up in the 80-120 range and now that IPO has cratered to the 55's range. Figma actually makes a profit Vs OpenAI.

SippieCup

Its the rate of dilution which is important, not that there is any. We can look at another speculative deep tech research stock which has far less proven tech & far more expenses, QuantumScape, and see how it compares. QS also has necessary dilution of ~20%, half of what Aduro's is, and that is over the past 5 years, not 6 months. While dealing with stuff on a far bigger scale. Aduro's product is their stock, not what they are building. What they have isn't groundbreaking nor that scalable. They have absolutely no buy in from any institutions or VC funds, all they truly have is one shell executive saying "validate it over 3 years and we can work together" and they call it a partnership. Audro went public too early via to fleece retail, you can try and blind yourself as much as you want. as far as milestones: > NGP build + commissioning (extruder, reactor, recovery system) with Zeton & Siemens. This isn't "with zeton & Simens", thats just their vendors. If you give them money, they will build whatever you want. It isn't an endorsement of their tech. >Cold-to-wet integrated campaigns beginning Sept/Oct 2025. This is just them using whatever they built. >Shell GameChanger Graduation you graduate regardless, its a 3 year program. it doesnt derisk anything. >Alignment remains strong: Insiders still hold ~36%, which is very high for a microcap. Institutions are just beginning increase, leaving a broad retail base—but that retail base also positions Aduro for an outsized rerate when institutions step in. ADUR insiders had a lock up period until May 6th I believe. So they could not sell until recently. Doesn't really show much of anything.. except when you look at the stock price over that time and see that it was basically flat. After May 6th, there started being a lot more media and retail attention. They started generating hype & marketing around ADUR, and its only growth coincidentally has only been since that lockout period ended. Just a fun tidbit. >Early-stage lens: In venture-style investing, dilution is the currency of progress. What matters is how the company exicutes with it—here, Aduro has bought a funded path to proof-of-scale, validation by a global major, and visibility at the right industry tables. If they were that focused on execution, why are they distracting themselves so much with an IPO, jumping through all the filing hoops you have to as a public company, etc. If anything it shows poor management, and an inability to raise from traditional pre-ipo sources.

Oli99uk

Yeah - I think a dip tomorrow of maybe 2% on markets broadly speaking and then rebound. Seems to be popular opinion there will be rate cuts 17th so Im expecting a dip in my stocks (asia & tech) just before with a rebound after, so looking to buy that dip. Of course, not advice. Lots of risk - huge PE for use tech, VC funding at 10 year low in China but there is a stimulus drive. I'm bullish but also skittish - could rapidly fall so I have to watch with more frequency that i normally would

can_of_hearts

This has all the makings of a bubble adjacent roller coaster. Secondaries have been hyped up for a while - lots of institutional backing from blackrock and VC funding. Also, going the IPO route (instead of SPAC) adds a thin layer of legitimacy. It might do well off the gate. Curious to see what the default rates look like.

skycake10

>Found Padsplit, which does affordable workforce housing while giving property owners 2x traditional returns. ... Looking at the numbers, properties average 15-20% returns vs 7-10% for traditional rentals in the same neighborhoods. So it's a standard VC-funded company that doesn't make money? That money has to come from somewhere.

Annual-Car1119

I have 7800 shares that I have bought anywhere between $2.40 and $4.06. I am long on it myself, 5-10 years, maybe longer. I was a little hesitant at time because of the whole "AI Bubble" thing, but RZLV seems to remain largely unchanged and dare I say immune to it. Even when everything else is tanking, it doesn't move much at all. That's starting to change this week, but I've been looking at it like an index as far as returns go. Even when it's down, it's still delivering 7-9%. The potential short and long term upside far outweigh the average price per share or entry cost in my mind. I am going to keep buying up as many shares as I can while it's still delivering. I learned my lesson with $OPEN. I had 9K shares total with an average price per share of $1.18. I was riding high when it hit high $3 range, and panic sold at $2.. now it's screaming past $5. I never planned to be long on that like I am $RZLV. $OPEN has lots of positive tailwinds and some VC backing, but $RZLV has ALL major hedges and financial institutuins (Vanguard, BoA, Blackrock, Citadel, State Street,JPMorgan, Geode, etc.) interested. Most of them are buying small positions, but to me it shows that they see some potential. [https://fintel.io/so/us/rzlv](https://fintel.io/so/us/rzlv)

skycake10

Because it's good for getting users and that's good for getting VC money, and possibly good for making an IPO pop.

jnas_19

Software doesn't need crazy innovation, they just gotta keep people hooked and content with future price hikes. So long as there's serious competition you will see companies try and get whatever edge they can over their competitor to maximize profits. There will always be a new gimmick or flashy product that VC money/big corpo will dump into regardless of profitability, that massive amount of capital is what helps keep the US so attractive for entrepreneurs and investors. If we think about what country could seriously pull that flow of capital away from the US there is no serious alternative as of yet and probably for a long time.

galactic_cruise

VC trying to cash the fuck out on their scams before the house of cards collapses

killua_jajanken

Yes - 1. if I were 100% serious 2. Many stocks pop 100-200% within a year -> with options easy 5-8x. Still no VC investment.

hbgwine

I just got word that Bluestar airlines is going to be exonerated by the FAA for crash caused the door issue. Manufacturing issue, not maintenance. This is huge. They may get acquired by a VC!

Worried_Quarter469

Nah he’s VC, he’s been publicly saying for years he wants to destroy the megacaps to help his startups

Admirable-Grass9225

imagine calling yourself a hedge fund, its like calling 1 regard a VC 😂😂😂 its probably the most regarded thing ive heard in 2025, a hedge fund with 1 member 😂😂😂

inappropriateshallot

Right then, something useful did come racing back, clear as crystal: advice his squad leader had given him over twenty years ago, when he was a scared kid on the Vietnam/Cambodia border. They had been taking cheap pot-shots from VC snipers on their exposed little FOB at the top of a defoliated foothill all day. Dan wasn’t wearing a helmet, not that it would have mattered, when a 7.92 Mauser round whistled past his ear hot enough to sting before burying itself harmlessly in a sandbag. Shaken before his night watch on the .50 Cal, he confessed he thought he was done for, knowing somewhere out there in the black valley a thirteen-year-old fisherman’s son or daughter probably had him in the crosshairs. Talk about asymmetrical warfare. His squad leader had only said, matter-of-factly: “Stop worrying about dying out here, and you’ll probably live.”

AwildYaners

Yeah, must have been living under a rock, I envy you. There’s multiple articles extensively chronicling Thiel’s relationship with Vance since at least 2024. I remember reading a Forbes article about. He met him while going to Yale in 2010 or 2011, switched dreams of lawyer to VC, and joined Mithril Capital in 2015. When Vance launched his own VC, Thiel and a former Google exec invested heavily in 2018. Thiel helped Vance smooth things over with the OJ guy.

Few-Needleworker4391

**Proximity + shared VC ties = makes sense for a tuck-in acquisition.**

Over-Computer-6464

Valuations that were supported only by the most optimistic guesses at future rapid growth, and even then, it would be 10+ years before profitability. I had awesome returns in some VC investments in the early 90s (as a limited partner and part time technical advisor), but declined participation in the next partnership that was started in 1999 as they were pivoting more towards media startups and even crazier assumptions for revenue and profit growth. And at that point there was tons of money flooding into VCs so really dumb deals were being funded. The "greater fool" method of valuation works ……. until you run out of fools. The problem faced by shareholders in tech companies is in the late 1990s was how to maximize returns as your holdings went from being overvalued to being amazingly overvalued. Every time my holdings doubled I would sell another 30 o 40% of remaining holdings.

MattieShoes

Imagine if all the growth in the market was tiny VC backed companies whose products were just GPT chatbots, and they lose mountains of money every single quarter with no real plan on how to *ever* make money. That's what the dot com bubble was.

isinkthereforeiswam

I knew the dot com bubble was coming when companies started showing up not understanding why the internet should get leveraged  Eg there was some company trying to recreate a shopping mall in 3D using xml to model the 3D. The idea was you'd waste time walking a virtual mall to get where you wanted to go and then browse and shop goods which would then get shipped to you. Jakob Nielsen, a web usability guru back in the day, was writing Alertbox, his web site pointing out poor usability on other sites and how to fix it. He pointed out that this company missed the point of the web, which was being able to quickly find and scroll through things and then purchase as quick and painless as possible.  There were other companies showing up making web pages that were nothing but ads. Had a coworker at my job do his own side biz where he made a web site that was nothnng but ads. What value did he add? None. He expected his page to show up when people did searches, they'd browse his page, then click an ad and he'd get as revenue. I asked him if he came across his site would he waste more than 2 seconds on it once he realized it was nothing but ads and no content? He thought other people would. Absolute delusions about how people would interact with the web, etc. Sites were showing up expecting people to learn their new convoluted menu systems. Jakob was like "just copy amazon, bc people spend more of their time on OTHER PEOPLES SITES, not yours,,and they don't want to face a,learning curve to use your site." People thought their web site was one of few, and surfers would be willing to put up with stupidity and time wasting. They had rude awakenings when they realized the net was FLOODED with competitors vying for the same market share. So they had to figure out how to make the experience valuable and profitable. So many startups misunderstanding how people would use something, but had so much cash to pursue pipe dreams. And the ads...folks learned that was the major revenue maker on some sites. But the ads became jiggly gifs trying to get your attention, spammed on the pages, pop ups, pop unders, try to close a site it hijacks your click and reroutes, adware auto installing. It became VERY abusive. But the web owners didn't care. They just wanted to get paid to SHOW ads (not even click them). People were getting ticked off at web sites. If your goal is to lure people in to try to sell them stuff, don't make it a vegas strip with barkers stopping you every two feet telling you to buy something and then crapping on you when you don't. Then the bricks n mortars were struggling from folks "showrooming" items just to go home and buy it online. They were too stupid to get an online store presence going sooner. Everythinf became abusive to potential customers, and some if the dumbest ideas ever were given VC money.

0xAlx

Les boites qui portent le SP500 ne sont pas sous perfusion des VC … Google, Meta, MS n’attendent pas après les VC pour financer leurs IA

Immediate-Run-7085

VC don’t fund anything when they buy stock. They are not writing checks directly to google. You think when you buy a share of google, it goes right into their bank? VC buy stock hoping it’ll go up. Google is funding their own AI

Puzzleheaded-Let-880

All you had to do to was make a website then you can pitch an ipo deck to VC and they'd back you. All you needed was a WEBSITE!

Puzzleheaded-Let-880

All you had to do to was make a website then you can pitch an ipo deck to VC and they'd back you. All you needed was a WEBSITE!

AboveParGolfer2380

how are you putting money in databricks? via secondary offerings or are you a VC.

chopsui101

yeah, unless your a VC getting in on the pre-ipo I don't see this working

PlayfulLustBug

I'm real skeptical of CRWV's potential rn. Their earnings look pretty sketchy, and the CEO's recent stunt smells like a pump-n-dump. VC's def risky, but this one's a landmine

skilliard7

Nvidia is an interesting stock in that their financial performance is mostly dependent on investment in AI startups: 1. VC money flows to AI startups, which spend money on Cloud providers(Microsoft Azure, Amazon AWS, Google Cloud) to train their models or handle inference. These AI startups are failing to achieve a profit, but are kept afloat by Billions in investor funding and debt. 2. These cloud providers buy Nvidia chips, and rent them out for a premium, making easy profits(for now) 3. Cloud providers make investments in these startups in exchange for agreements to use their cloud. This creates what is essentially a round trip transaction; cloud providers can report revenue growth, even though all that money is just flowing back to the startups as funding. 4. Large tech companies implement useless AI features into their apps that their users don't even like, and force them onto users so that they can report AI growth and appease shareholders. This does not achieve any earnings growth, but it makes shareholders happy. 5. Nvidia benefits from all of this nonsense investment that isn't generating any significant real world value. The concern is that once these startups fail and less investment flows to AI startups due to poor returns, Nvidia's sales will decline by 80% or more.

skilliard7

You don't need Nvidia GPUs to implement AI solutions. Amazon Trainium/INF2, AMD, Google TPUs on Google Cloud, there is a lot of alternatives. Nvidia's lead has been slowing. Also, 95% of AI projects fail to achieve ROI. Nearly every AI startup is unprofitable. This is tech bubble 2.0, the only profitable AI companies are Nvidia, and cloud providers like Microsoft that sell access to hardware at a markup. The majority of VC funding is already going towards AI - Unless these startups succeed and scale rapidly, growth will plateau soon.

DrixGod

Yeah people here like to be very pro European and anti American. I don't know why they mix politics with making money, the us will always triumph. Eu just focuses on taxing as much as possible and doesn't have VC culture.

Jellym9s

1. The Board is the problem and the chairman needs to be fired because he wanted to sell the manufacturing to make pennies, when Intel fabs will eventually be worth hundreds of billions of dollars. 2. Technically speaking about 2.2b in actual subsidy, TSMC took in about 1.7b. Although appropriated much more, the total amount for CHIPS act to most companies has not been given because they were performance and requirement based milestones. So now Intel did get the full amount but as a trade for equity, which is about the same as a VC or investment firm offer. 3. Because TSMC and Samsung are heavily subsidized and supported by their respective countries, even if Intel could execute well, they would not be on equal footing. How does a company compete against a sovereign manufacturing company without the backing of their own country? Now the dynamic has changed. This result was one of the questions studied in the Section 232 semiconductor tariff: the effects of foreign countries subsidizing their semiconductors.

skilliard7

Big tech companies are already pouring most of their free cash flow into AI & even borrowing a bit, the majority of VC funding in 2025 is to AI startups. 95% of AI investments are unprofitable. Where do you expect the funding for continued growth in Nvidia will come from?

dominicusbenacus

The key word is price discovery by third party smart money. 75% of companies had recent price discovery by smart money - hence VC investors like Siddhi Capital. Does this make the NAV look less naive to you? Maybe something to be mentioned in the post, I agree

North_Second_418

If you want to get into companies *before* they hit the Nasdaq, you inevitably move into the **illiquid pre-IPO / private markets**. And that’s a very different game than buying a ticker on your brokerage account. A few things to keep in mind: * **IPO timing is uncertain.** A lot of “hot pre-IPOs” are marketed as “about to list,” but in practice the IPO may be delayed by years – or never happen. The longer it takes, the more it drags on returns (your capital is locked meanwhile). * **Liquidity is basically zero.** Unlike public stocks, you usually can’t sell your pre-IPO shares. You’re stuck until the company exits (IPO, acquisition, or secondary sale). * **Access is via platforms / SPVs.** There are platforms (e.g. Sette & Co, Notice, Forge, etc.) that let individuals participate with relatively small tickets. But almost always you’re investing via a **special purpose vehicle (SPV)** pooled with many others. That means no control over the exit process. * **Information flow is limited.** Unlike public companies, private ones don’t publish quarterly reports. Updates are sparse, delayed, and often lack detail. That’s deliberate – competitors are watching, and companies share numbers only with a very tight circle. From the perspective of a VC manager: I see “hot pre-IPO offers” every quarter. In reality, only a tiny fraction of those actually make it to IPO, and most take far longer than people expect. A few 2025 examples illustrate this: * **CoreWeave** – strong candidate, IPO successful. * **Klarna** – hyped for years, still hasn’t IPO’d. * **BrainLAB** – was preparing for IPO, then pulled it. So, while pre-IPO investing can be exciting, it comes with very different rules of the game: **illiquidity, timing risk, limited information, and dependency on investor pressure to push a listing through**. 👉 If you’re curious, I’m happy to share more about how **venture capital works in general** – and especially what’s unique about **late-stage / growth-stage investing** compared to the public markets.

Ok-League-1106

Crypto is not really looked at as anything real outside of the Crypto community. No one uses it for anything outside of illegal purchases for the most part. A lot of the biggest companies in America are hitching their wagon to AI. Chat GPT 5 was good, but not amazing. They thought scaling laws didnt apply to AI. Looks like they were wrong. How long can they continue to lose billions is anyones guess but on a linear trajectory, the bill is going to come due at some stage and those big companies cant really pay without VC funding (who also want money back).

Ok_Willingness2174

How? Put 80-90% in index funds. Use the rest for these growth plays. And hold. Think more like a VC or angel investor and know that most of them will not pan out, but the ones that do will take a few years and then…. They will skyrocket in value. (Or maybe slowly grow into a 10X play)

DonutsOnTheWall

i want your best opinion on a date when the ai bubble will burst # ChatGPT said: If I had to pin down one date range, based on adoption curves, VC cycles, and market psychology, my best opinion is: **The AI bubble will likely burst (or at least hit its first major correction) around late 2026 to 2027.** Here’s why I pick that window: * **Hype cycle timing:** We’re in the peak of inflated expectations now (2023–2025). Historically, bubbles take \~3–5 years from hype peak to correction (dotcom: 1997–2000, crypto: 2017–2021). * **GPU overbuild risk:** NVIDIA and others are selling everything they can make, but hyperscalers are racing to build massive capacity. By 2026, supply will catch up, and demand growth may not justify it → margins compress. * **Startup burn rate:** Billions are flowing into AI startups without proven revenue. Most have 2–3 years of runway. By 2026–27, a wave of failures will hit. * **Investor sentiment:** Interest rate cuts (expected 2025–26) could inflate things further, but once growth disappoints, the correction tends to be sharp. I don’t think AI as a whole collapses (it’s too fundamental), but I expect **valuations in AI-adjacent stocks and startups to deflate hard in 2026–27** — similar to the dotcom crash, after which the survivors (Amazon, Google back then; NVIDIA, Microsoft, OpenAI today) dominate long term. Would you like me to also sketch what *leading indicators* to watch for (so you’ll know when the bubble is actually starting to leak)?

Qs9bxNKZ

It does not mean buying 10% of the market shares, watch an episode of Shark Tank. An angel or VC investor can inject capital without a controlling or seat. In fact, SEC rules allow for a 5% stake as an investor without disclosure, the equivalent of a silent partner.

LastAd3056

I was a sceptic at first, just like you, but I am slowly coming around. When the tech CEOs were bragging, AI will write all the code of a junior engineer, I thought these people are just hyping up for VC money. They probably were, but the last month or so, what I am seeing in cursor and these tools, its pretty damn scary good. So, I think there is some truth to the fact, AI will indeed reduce the number of people, or the time it takes to code. Now, to your point about next token prediction, you are not wrong in saying this. But the surprising effectiveness of next token prediction is just unbelievable. Why? I don't know. That is the important scientific question of our time. But the reasoning capabilities (what do they say, "emergent" or something), the capabilities in coding, data analysis that next token prediction, properly tuned with various other strategies can do is unbelievable! And its only getting better. I used to laugh at people who said next token prediction is solving every problem, now they are laughing at me. If something works, it works. If modern Machine Learning has taught us anything, brute force scaling, faster hardware can beat clever mathematical models. If clever math models won the day, Support Vector Machines and the Kernel methods were the sexiest and most elegant machine learning models ever thought about. Most Machine learning students today haven't heard about it. Deep Learning was extremely effective. Why? Dont ask me, that's a really difficult question to answer. Anyway, this sub is about Stock Market. So, coming to broader implications, I personally think, a huge wave of white collar job loss is about to happen. Coding is actually a pretty complex task. There are a bunch of white collar jobs, which are nothing more that data entry, some basic analysis, emailing other people and following up, and some variations of such things, that millions of people do. There is no reason AI cannot replace these jobs, or atleast drastically reduce the number of people needed to do them. Even the most highly paid white collar workers aren't doing something wonderfully creative. Some work that doctors do (not all, like surgery cannot be replaced), or grunt work at law firms, these things will slowly get replaced.

throwaway1736484

Nah, 90%+ startups fail as it is now, they know most of them will return nothing. The LP’s are already rich people who continue to invest in VC as just a part of their portfolio. It’s not all or nothing for the LP’s or VC, only the startups. As their portfolio grows and or throws off dividends, some of that becomes available for VC to raise new funds.

motorbikler

> For Silicon Valley venture investors, long the lifeblood of risky tech startups, the system isn’t functioning as intended. Companies that would otherwise be on the path to a potential initial public offering or lucrative acquisition are getting pulled apart, with the bulk of the cash ending up in the pockets of the founders and their leading engineers. “The money doesn’t flow as straightforwardly as it would in just a pure M&A transaction,” said Rob Toews, partner at Radical Ventures. God, I'm so torn on this. Often founders but _especially_ first engineer employees get screwed by VC funds. They say, we'll give you equity, and you think it could be worth millions, then they dilute you until it's worth $10k. So I'm happy the tables have turned. On the other hand, 5 large corporations buying up planet earth is real bad, real real bad.

AmberLeafSmoke

He's essentially running an in-house AI VC. He invests $100s of millions into a number of the top names in the field, if one of them makes the next billion dollar idea under his IP he can then use the META Product and GTM machine to monetize the the shit out of it. That's not even getting into the use cases they'll be able to apply to their current products and the money they'll save through efficiency and market share they'll gain. It's a very decent strategy tbh. It's not as if he's paying everyone all their comp up front, or doesn't have large chunks of it tied to performance and stock. Even if he fails $1bn is peanuts to them. They did nearly $50bn in revenue last quarter alone.

db_deuce

That's why reshoring industries is very important. AI may drive unemployment, but short term, VC's are pouring trillions into thousands of startups and the Mag 7 are looking at 100B Capex each, which was a mere 30-40B a couple years ago. So this movement is very real in the short term.

Due_Expression_2382

He’s a weakass CEO who stumbled into VC success but has no clue of how to run a company. No backbone. Tons of infighting within the org. They started insuring exotics in FL also. On big storm and LR goes to the moon

greasethecheese

Except it’s not “just like a VC” it’s the government. Funny how ok you guys are with this. Lol

stockmonkeyking

What is socialism? I’m genuinely confused about Reddits view on this ever since this was announced. Socialism to me is using tax money to provide a service without nothing in return, other than your taxes you already pay. Trump is asking Intel to hand over equity for the funding which is what you see in capitalism. Whatever your views are on him, the admin is clear they doesn’t want to just give away the taxpayer funds without stake in it just like a VC firm.

jbvcftyjnbhkku

thank you for sharing, i’m not familiar with VC so this is interesting to read

gamjatang111

not to mention typical VC investment has similar failure rates. Does stop them from backing losers

Difficult_Eye1412

You are woefully misconstruing #2. Companies buy based on a projected return and 95% failure rate will earn new executive leadership. Judging by VC standards isn't appropriate. As for #3, I'm sure there's plenty of data of customer dissatisfaction with "phone trees" and how the AI is implemented will greatly influence satisfaction (can customer exit to an agent?) AI is here to stay no doubt, but I think we are at the knee in the curve of investment, companies WILL start scaling back investment if results don't materialize. There might be a long learning curve. Personally, I think many businesses will need to change processes first before they can capitalize on AI investment...and that's an old problem, not a new one. I also think that if anything is at risk, its off-shore call centers, they'll be the first to go at AI's hand. Keep the on-shore SMEs. But back to my original question, how do you think the market would react?

Thotmas01

This shit doesn’t drop until enough ai VC traps got tits up.

PainInTheRhine

Unironically that's how it should work. Grants? It's fucking welfare for companies. Instead make it work like VC fund - you want money? Sure, but in exchange for equity. Maybe also make a rule that govt needs to exit their position within X years to avoid too much concentration.

Based_Commgnunism

Rescheduling doesn't really change anything for the average person and doesn't mean you can't keep filling up prisons in states where it's outlawed. It just means weed companies can get VC funding and puuuuump.

eviljordan

It’s what the EOS blockchain became. You may not remember EOS, but it was started by a kid diddler who fled to Puerto Rico and has someone managed to escape prison. His wife is also a VC and shills bullshit at crypto conferences. It’s a scam all the way down.

db_deuce

Your RSU likely have a double trigger, one for time based vesting and one for liquidity event like an IPO and/or acquisition. There Is nothing you can do there as you keep the vested portion but won't see any $$ now due to the double trigger. You keep the amount that is vested per the RSU agreement. You wait to see how the company shakes out and maybe one day the vested RSU turns into a payday. On the stock option, you would have earned some amount based on the time based vesting but this time you need to make a decision to whether exercised at the strike price contractually, usually within 90 days of your separation. If you exercise (you pay for X amount of shares with real cash), you are an owner and officially part of the cap table. The tricky part is you have a strike price for the share and the value of the share is relatively unknown. private companies does what is called a 409A valuation which is outside actuarial determining the value of the common shares, which is different from the VC's preferred shares. So when you hear this company rock a X valuation that does not mean the value of common shares are valued as such as common shares are the residual of the waterfall in the valuation and the preferred takes it off the top first. You have 90 days to decide to excerise or not and you should just call the CFO and ask him/her what is the 409A. They usually keep it real and outline whether you should do it or not. GL

moondawg8432

What? He’s a VC guy. Dropped out of college to do startups. He’s not a computer nerd

CaptainCanuck93

I think you're right in most cases, but also probably just because it's a pain in the ass to fundraise from people who can't really contribute much Wealthsimple set up agreements with Accolade to make Venture Capital accessible to retail, but in reality it is a close-ended fund where they collected ~$50 million to contribute to a ladder of Accolade VC funds so it's still essentially an institutional play

SirGlass

>if something is a good investment it’s going to get scooped up by an entity high on the financial food chain (bank, VC, hedge fund, private equity, family office, sovereign wealth fund, etc.) before it trickles down to retail/crowdfunding. I feel that retail investors are probably a last resort for those raising funds. Am I wrong? No this is why I am very skeptical of things like this

PotatoInMyHat

It’s a good article. I’m always tempted to diversify away from equities and bonds - and now there’s a push to put private equity into 401Ks. My dumb opinion is that if something is a good investment it’s going to get scooped up by an entity high on the financial food chain (bank, VC, hedge fund, private equity, family offices, sovereign wealth funds, etc.) before it trickles down to retail/crowdfunding. I feel that retail investors are probably a last resort for those raising funds. Am I wrong?

pragmojo

Not really - SVB was like a calculated attack on the banking system to try to get the interest rate lowered. VC's "warned" their founders that SVB was at risk, causing a run on the bank which resulted in the collapse. But the whole thing was stupid. SVB was managing their money stupidly, there didn't have to be a run in the first place, and startup founders were stupid for keeping millions of dollars of VC money in an account which was not going to be fully protected by FDIC.

chopsui101

its a 20 year old company that still isn't profitable, but they promise investors that they will. Sounds more like VC's trying to pass the bag onto the dumb money to me. RDDT might get to profitability but then again it might not. Might get to a really high valuation by selling the AI dream.

MaltoonYezi

To be honest, after those years, looking back, I could say one thing: Forget about the price charts, just learn how to value a company fundamentally The aftermath of Nio and Palantir tell this story exactly: 1) NIO largely capitalized on EV hype of 2020 - 2021. But NIO's strategy (large capital expenditures from the beginning) to profitability was flawed and had poor execution 2) But Palantir just focused on its core products Gotham, Foundry, Apollo. It's proven that data was still valuable monetarily. And it made analytics quite easier by integrating messy and siloed data into a convenient platform. I remember reading in 2021, about 1 data scientist arguing that Palantir is going to take his job, so he buys Palantir to hedge his career. He said that before the rise of Palantir, a lot of analytical data was in Excel and .csv files and you had to use tools like Python / power BI to analyze and interpret it. But Palantir's platforms are taking care of all of this work in a more automatic fashion. They also aimed niche in the beginning (producing intelligence platform for the government) and later started to expand into the private sector If you look at Palantir's stock, you can notice it was low and stagnant between March 2022 to May 2023 but then started to grow significantly on November 2024. This rise cannot be explained by the price action. Or even by the order flow data. The company by that moment just started to look like a good business consistently delivering good profitability results, and that's it. Palantir's deep interconnection with CIA and the rest of the US government, makes it a lot easier. That could also be a reason, why Anduril might have a bright future. This is quite ironical to be honest, because with Palantir's being a software with large profit margins, and NIO's deep tech physical product with negative profits margins, I still kinda like deep tech more than software. But I guess these 2 companies would out of the scope of my attention anyway, if I were a large VC before they went public So, on an additional note - It would be really useful if you learn how to value private companies from a VC/PE prospective, before you move on to public companies. >"We take private equity approach to public markets" \- is a thing

bigmink88

“Smart people got over excited by new technology.” This is not a new thing. This happens in every startup niche. And if its repeated, are they really smart people or do they just know to spray cash at everything they can and hope 1 makes a huge return. Welcome to the VC model.

GlokzDNB

Most ai startups are VC backed and not publicly traded. The bubble is growing outside of stock market

tulip-quartz

He wants to divert VC funds from other startups back to his own

KumichoSensei

When VC money dries up

Confident-Court2171

Re: Nuclear - Fusion. Those companies are locked up by VC, but that’s a bigger game changer than the Fission players today.

greytoc

Thanks for the additional context. My curiosity is mostly about private transactions for private companies where a broker is not involved. For example - shares in VC-backed startups. In that context - there may be no "street name". And secondary transaction brokers like an EquityZen, etc. may not be involved. I did a rule 144 sale a few years ago but the VC fund wanted to be on the cap table. And the transaction costs ended up higher than I expected because of how the share agreement was setup with the issuing company. I still have a lot of shares which I've been contemplating selling but I've been wondering if it could be structured differently.

Enelson4275

I'm not so sure. Objectively speaking, we've come a long way with LLM chat and image generation in a short time. They are disrupting career fields and artists. Eventually the VC funding runs out, but all the biggest players in the space are either subsidiaries of giants that can take the hit, or else aligned to roll into them eventually anyway. And big players like MS/Meta/Alphabet are much more broadly invested in machine learning in general. If the LLM approach falls apart, it will still be cleverly written off and hidden behind new shiny things. If Meta can spend billions every quarter on the Metaverse and not pop a bubble, the current AI boom isn't going to hard crash anything. LLM is a buzzword, one that major players keep using to describe all sorts of ML and non-ML products. It can't fail if the public doesn't even recognize what it actually is.

SoulStripHer

Apples vs oranges. I lived through the dotcom bubble too and paid a very heavy price at a young age. The difference today is that AI is being developed by mega cap companies and not speculative start ups using VC money that ultimately go out of business. That said, there may be a correction of sorts but not a bloody bubble bath.

foo-bar-nlogn-100

IPO are used to create bagholder. Unicorns being private for 10 years where VC make all the gains then going public is just exit liquidity. 10 years! Thats why markets are casinos now. They are used for exit liquidity rather than helping retail get rich.

Orange_Codex

I tried but HawkEye Bio is private. They're VC-funded and have had the patent for graphene-based lung cancer tests since the end of their last seed round (Q4 2019, Q1 2020).