VC

vinceoffershlomi

Barrier to entry is high. A large userbase is required to retain users, kind of a catch 22. Tinder worked at first because it was a way to easily find hookups, but they also had a lot of VC investment at outset to establish their userbase, giving them a buffer from the lean years. Once they got big enough they switched to algorithms and pay to play, and got bought by match group. Unless there is a large VC fund that wants to bet on starting a new dating app, i don't think we'll see any movement in this space

greytoc

I would be surprised if individual investors use expert networks. The few times that I do them, it seems like they are either (1) PE/VC investors; (2) product managers seeking insights; or (3) sales strategy seeking to refine their pitch.

hahyeahsure

right but 0% for every regarded idea VC funds give billions to is kosher

Chonan_Akira

I am not familiar with Victory Capital but your account was probably transferred to them from USAA. Are you content with keeping your account with VC and just picking better Funds/ETFs? This sub likes Fidelity, Vanguard, Schwab the best.

UnhappyReach

I can't respect any charlatan. He was an ok VC but him stealing credit for other people's creations is too much. 

captainbling

Maybe he is maybe he isnt. gotta remember there are millions of venture capitalists and by statistics, 7 of every million VC are gunna get heads 17x in a row. Maybe he has a gift tell by the spin what side it’ll land on but it hard to say for sure. Realistically there are gunna be successful VCs that get it right 3 times and look like champs.

betadonkey

He put a lot of major investment into Tesla because he’s a venture capitalist and that is what venture capitalists do. They put together funding rounds for startups, act as a liaison between the company and big money, and throw in some money themselves to add credibility. Nobody would deny Elon is a great VC - and part of his greatness in that arena stems from his ability to sell everything he does as being so much more than it is which gets people to open their pockets. Think of all the language shifts people apply to Elon that they don’t use for other VC’s. He’s not an investor, he’s a founder. He didn’t take an equity stake in a company, he poured his life savings into it. Etc, etc. Once upon a time he was very good at that job, but there was also a whole bunch of self-mythologizing that went along with it. Maybe charlatan is too strong, but he’s at least charlatan-adjacent.

IDrinkUrMilksteak

Great. Now ban Invitation Homes, Progress Residential, Pretium, Tricon Residential, Blackstone, American Homes 4 Rent, FirstKey Homes and a dozen others backed by hedge funds and VC from buying up huge swaths of homes for sale and essentially permanently removing them from the existing home sales pool so they can rent them back to us at exorbitant prices. This is also more about eliminating foreign interest versus protecting the consumer.

cryptocorrection69

I have a feeling it will be a VC firm, not a company that we could potentially profit from sadly

timbredesign

My perspective is that this is a bubble plain and clear. That's irregardless of where tech might be headed. Or whether it'll reach this valuation again in the future, based on reasonable valuations instead of hype like it is now. The current business applications of said current AI tech are not nearly as far reaching as the speculators are hyping. I'm saying that in terms of real near term economic changes. The deeper efficiencies that are possible with AI will take longer than a year or two, I'm guessing more than 5 (at least in terms of applying it to major manufacturing lines, financial institutions and the like). Right now we're just seeing surface level changes and mostly it's a design iteration phase. As far as I see there are too many unknowns for large businesses to integrate it as a part of their foundation. So it's mostly speculation based right now. On top of that the VC funding is beginning to dry up as interest rates hold steady, because the possible payout aren't there. Inflation just isn't going to miraculously dissolve in the near or mid term like mainstream media was suggesting. Based on that I expect to see a fair amount of instability and insolvency in the coming year or two in the space, not to mention others. Tldr, bigger picture stuff takes time.

Big_Worry1509

Based community, 50ppl + in VC. This is a gem

kalakesri

Canada budget making failed VC bros mad on Twitter  starting to like Trudeau

986fan

Thinking of creating an ai powered crypto to exchange NFTs in the metaverse. Did I use enough buzzwords to get VC funding?

GrodyToddler

Yeah but remember when Sam Bankman-Fried played League of Legends during a VC meeting? Look what a genius businessman he turned out to be. Boom. Headshot. Video games are big business.

Kyrtt

It's interesting that's for sure. They have a list of VC companies on their front page and I can't find youtse listed on the VC company pages https://a16z.com/portfolio/ That's a good example, Andreessen Horowitz is on the youtse.com page, however they are not listed in the a16z portfolio at all. company claims to have been running since 2017, yet it's domain was created end of 2023 Creation Date: 2023-10-24T10:10:56.00Z def feel it's a scam site

Famous_Ic

AI is just a buzzword that developers throw around to impress VC’s and investors.

TheGRS

Yep, and if that doesn't already sound risky in terms of time and effort, just also realize that most start-ups, even the ones that look very promising, still fail to pay out much unless you are a founder. Sometimes it happens, but it seems like most founders and VC firms have gotten wise on limiting the distribution of shares. One company where I worked (that I even did pretty well on when the payday came) refused to reveal their outstanding shares to employees when asked, since they didn't need to. We only found out what the share was when the official buy-out happened. One interesting anecdote: the lawyer we had on payroll and largely in charge of the legal side of this stuff had a huge share compared to other employees, on par with the founders, and he didn't even join until several years in. So your 10,000 shares might end up being like a pretty tiny payday.

SaneLad

What is this shit? A publicly traded VC fund?

Beautiful-Parsley-24

Generally, there are only three ways to get money back from a private company (1) dividends (2) buybacks and (3) selling to a third party (often called the secondary market). Your options will be limited or guaranteed by a document called a "share purchase agreement" or "shareholder's agreement" that you'll sign when you buy the stock. These documents can be very complex. If the company **is** desperate for money they may sell you special shares which guarantee you dividends. If the company **isn't** desperate for money then they won't offer you such guarantees. Options 1 & 2 are controlled by the board of directors while option (3) will be governed by your shareholder agreement. I've passed on joining many startups because they wouldn't give me option #3. There is something called a "Derivative suit". It's a very complex and expensive legal process, but if you can prove that board of directors/executives acted grossly negligent, beyond the point of mere bad business judgement, you can sue them to force (1), (2) or (3). You can expect to pay at least $100,000 to attempt to force a derivative action. Plus, it'll get you blacklisted by most silicon valley VC firms from ever investing in one of their private company's again.

ceskanda

PE/VC, I’m an emerging crossover investor

greytoc

It depends on the company. A venture backed company is likely unprofitable, so it won't be distributing dividends as u/GotPerl mentioned. The prospects of a liquidity event where the company goes public or be acquired is never guaranteed. The failure rates can be high - so typically a smaller investor would seek a feeder fund who feeds into a VC or PE fund - as u/i_like_my_dog_more mentioned. However - if you are talking about small income-based businesses who need capital - it's possible to invest in debt and be paid back interest. The risk of default is a lot higher so the interest may be higher as well. This is not an equity investment so you dont' hold shares. But this type of investing requires some expertise in the types of companies being invested.

i_like_my_dog_more

> There is a reason you have to be an accredited investor in the US to do private investment. Also adding that angel investing, VC, and private equity are generally numbers games. If you invest into 10 things, 5 will fail, 3-4 may return your investment. The remaining one or two will do well and offset the losses of the rest. A single private investment is a losing game.

dr_kmc22

Lower rates mean more investment and long term innovation and growth. But for big tech monopolists, they aren't really taking loans or getting VC investment. So increased pricing power is good for their short term profits. Also less VC funding means less disruption and competition. Big tech goes burr.

creemeeseason

Yeah. VC has basically been subsidizing ever for 15 years. Now they want money!

kbenti

Because Tech Hype usually gets all of the VC Funding and attention. He is saying long term persistence and growth is better than having a buzzworthy name for a few months. Think of years instead of months when you're building a product. Think of several development cycles instead of knocking it out of the park on your first try. Patience is the turtle beating the Hare.

arBettor

Yeah, that's one reason I prefer Private Shares. Why pay VC costs to buy public companies? I can buy COIN and TSLA myself for no commission or management fee. But not much has changed there during 1Q - mostly just TSLA falling off. It seems strange to sell a "VC" fund after one quarter based on how the public companies traded. I hope you didn't buy DXYZ with the ARK proceeds, because that would just be hopping out of the frying pan and into the fire.

cvrdcall

Did I say I was a VC?🤡

MellieCC

Saw your edits and additions, first of all it’s Silicon Valley not silicone. I literally know a lot of prominent VCs there, and I can promise you they haven’t all gone to zero and I have literally no idea what you’re talking about, this is nuts. Peter Thiel, VC and investor of Facebook? Billionaire. There are too many to name honestly. Just, bye this convo is ridiculous

Thehealthygamer

Seems like a way to get invested in companies that non VC investors don't have access to and that seems attractive. But looking over their holdings the only one that jumps out at me is OpenAI.

thrwaway0502

$167M isn’t necessarily a huge bet. He might just like the cashflow and margin profile. Berkshire isn’t a VC, they value predictable underwriting and reliable performance over swinging for home runs

fuji_ju

When they run out of VC yes. Also they just purchased the EM4 fab firm Goich & Housego, and that fab has a reputation of being pricy.

Flat-Shallot3992

no as soon as Banks can handle dispensary money without worry of of the feds expect multi-million dollar VC investments. >Most are losing money YoY absolutely not true.

pepesilviafromphilly

Ah VC funding....how we peasants get the our share of capital gains of other people.

Bodoblock

I know I'm very much in the minority but I find food delivery prices largely reasonable. I know customers have been conditioned to see it as a cheap service due to years of VC funding, but it is inherently an expensive proposition. Having someone drive, pick up your food, and drop it off at your door has a meaningful cost. Estimating it takes 25 minutes of time, on average, it should cost at least $6 - $9 (depending on your market) to make it worth someone's time. Then you have to account for the operating costs, which are not unsubstantial, and therein lies the full accounting. It's a luxury, not a right. And it's being priced accordingly as a luxury.

BoldestKobold

> How does a small company with very few customers lose $58 million in one year? Sounds like a bit of a scam. Massive payouts to insiders with unearned contracts. Same as any startup that is happily burning through VC money, with founders leading lavish lifestyles before the inevitable crash and burn.

subtle_asian_boiy

That's basically what VC does, and generally you will need to be considered a "sophisticated investor" to be eligible for that. The last I checked you will need an AUM of $1M or making $200k+ p.a. (300k if joint with a spouse) to be eligible.

LiquefactionAction

Take it with a grain of salt since I think I heard it on WSB first, but apparently the waits for cybertruck are actually really short because demand isn't there anymore. If you want one right now, you can probably get it in under a quarter at most. elon waited way too long to roll it out, if he had it ready during the VC Unicorn Hype-era of the late 2010s, maybe even by covid, they probably would have sold like hot cakes. the moment is over now

SomebodyElseKnows

😆 May it's a VC thing. Surprised the bank is fine with it. Feels like yoloing your private school loans on a friends 💡because you can get 3% until they fail. You'd need some amazing returns to offset all the defaults.

chopsui101

She invests like a VC or a PE but in an ETF which generally hasn't preformed well. But to her credit she does say that her time horizon is like 5 years or something. You have to decide if she is grifting you or making sense.

the_leviathan711

You're not intentionally taking lesser gains, you're just not performance chasing. [Check out the 2000s](https://www.portfoliovisualizer.com/backtest-portfolio?s=y&sl=4BiTD0jLhaED7FoqUDrv03) - it's a decade where both bonds and international equity outperformed the SP500. Obviously the last 15 years the SP500 has outperformed international equities and bonds, but there is no reason to assume that will last forever. It's entirely possible that you are missing out on buying international stocks and small cap stocks for cheap at the moment and you'll have to buy into them later after the price has run up. Or feel free to consider [SP500 vs. Small Cap Value vs. Emerging Markets](https://www.portfoliovisualizer.com/backtest-portfolio?s=y&sl=5F96acvq7lUUSsUp276VC9) for the last 25 years. That's a lot of gains you miss out on by only buying large cap US stocks! At least SPY is a real strategy though, QQQ is not - it's just a random basket of stocks that happens to have had a very good run lately. It's like the basic definition of performance chasing.

alfredrowdy

VC sucks up all of the small cap gains and they don't IPO until they are mid or large cap. You would never be able to buy a stock like 80s Microsoft, 90s Amazon, or 00s Google today because VC holds onto them through f/g/h rounds.

gnocchicotti

Dude went to one VC firm looking to sell equity at 20B valuation. VC said 5B - but they would pay at 20B if FTX got someone else to pay at 20B. And he basically pulled it off because valuations are made up and he knew it. Best part - they didn't even need capital, they just needed a valuation on the books so they could use the FTX stake (tokens) as collateral for more regarded YOLOs inside Alameda. Don't talk no shit, dude is 💯 one of us

ravepeacefully

Jeff bezos has a 90k salary and is worth over 100 billion. That’s not really a relevant fact. Her husband was a millionaire VC. Did you hear this news from tim Dillon?

Acoconutting

**TL/DR** \- > They simply believe in their own bullshit. ​ I run a finance department and work foe entrepreneurs / rich people. There's a lot of interesting mental gymnastics that goes on. They get into a mentality that like - getting the money is right. Whatever the story is that somehow sells their story, their idea, their whatever is right. It couldn't be wrong. How could it be wrong? They're rich and successful and of course they are right and bla bla. In truth, these people started on third base. They all went to private high schools and their dads were someone or they knew people with money or their best friends had a path groomed to wherever - fancy college, seed money, VC, etc. I often have discussions with them, nearly daily - and plan strategy and compensation and people and M&A and etc etc.... The truth is...they literally block out and refuse to accept things they don't like. This doesn't mean they don't work hard - or at least spend a lot of time working or "working". It just means...their entire end game is crafting rationale to defend the status quo because the status quo is really good to them. The idea of fiduciary responsibility isn't with them - It's the auditors. If they couldn't do it - why would the banks let them. If they whatever, why didn't the people they hired tell them otherwise, if they.... Often times....they were told...repeatedly. They simply blocked out whatever they were told, and refused to accept it, and then started trying to think about how to get around it - because that's "entrepreneurship" and etc. But they've had literally no ***real*** accountability in their lives. They've never been told no. They've always had money. They enter into a very narcissistic feedback loop where the people around them are rewarded by playing into the loop. This also doesn't mean every one of them is "bad". I work with some nice generous rich people who do the same thing. Their "like" might be "get rich together with my friends" - they have a REALLY easy time doing things they like, and they have a REALLY hard time doing things they don't like - probably because they were never told no in their lives. Even really basic shit like - Showing up to the same meeting at the same time weekly - If you're rich and in power and rather just randomly call people whenever things come to your brain....that's going to be the culture of the company.

fourestgump69

I don’t get it either - thinking it’s probably similar to an IPO where it’s getting bid up or and this is me high on hopium investors believe it’s undervalued bc it’s currently holding 23 of its potential 100 VC backed companies. It’ll either fill up w quality or shitcos. Cool idea either way, I’m willing to roll some dice.

Any_Angle_5815

I (44M) am a single parent of two kids who are wholly financially dependent on me. I do not (currently) live in the US. I have $314K to invest in the US stock market. I wish to grow this money as best (fast?) as possible. * I do not need to split my corpus 60:40 in equities:bonds, since I have other investments outside of the US that complete my portfolio. * I am investing $50K out of this in an early stage VC fund. I have known the Principal of this fund for 20+ years and feel confident about the fund's strategy. * I have invested the balance in VOO, VTI, VUG and QQQ. I am unable to decide the ratio between these ETFs (which is the motivation for this post). Should it be VOO:VTI:VUG:QQQ 1:1:1:1, or a little less risky 2:2:1:1? A bit of my background, since I see that this usually helps folks when making recommendations. * I am currently able to save \~$80K/year from my job. My health has progressively deteriorated in this job and I'll likely have to quit it soon. * The savings I have are enough for me to retire comfortable in my country of residence. I am currently constructing a forever home in the mountains. * The savings I have are simply not enough to send my kids to (undergraduate) college in the US, something they aspire for. That would (allegedly) cost close to $500K per child. * I also own a business that has done reasonable well for itself in the last few years. If I quit my job and put in a bit of work into it, this business would easily pay for the current living expenses of our family of three, and my individual living expenses till I retire. * The current hare-brained plan is to * Quit my job and focus on my health and my business. * Grow my savings as fast as possible so maybe it can fund my kids' educational dreams (if not two undergrads in the US, then an undergrad in Europe followed by a postgrad in the US). * If I end up losing a chunk of my corpus due to the high risk I am taking, I just go back to wage slavery and build it back up over a few years. * I do not have debts. I only need the money when I retire in 15+ years, and when my kids go to college - within the next few years. I could do something wonky like take out student loans to pay for their college, while letting my corpus grow. And at some point when the corpus outgrows the principal amount of the loan(s) I pay them off.

kimchi_station

Its because VC can make short term investments on non-profitable companies which don't actually provide any meaningful services and still make a profit by cashing out when it gets purchased or IPOs.

gnocchicotti

It's not just morons and gamblers who play a part. All of these fuckers are enabled by the system in big finance. They get VC money, they get the Forbes cover, they get the photo ops and the glowing profiles. Their investors set them up with legal, accountants, fuck they even hire people to dress them and shop around flattering softball interviews around finance media. Neumann wasn't some sneaky conman who slipped under the radar, he was just the show pony that got paraded around just one phase in an ongoing, repeatable scheme. When the companies get busted for fraud (think Nikola) the investors just step back and say "we are *shocked* that fraudulent activity is happening within this startup!" and often the CEO gets made an example of. Think SBF of FTX - he's going to jail forever, the outside investors who helped boost his profile, all the people who took piles of cash to promote for him, the outside accountants? Last I heard they're all still good. 

gnocchicotti

VCs throw money at these guys. Are they too stupid to know the companies are worthless and the financials are unfixable? Of course not. They have done their DD and have calculated that the story is good enough to have a fair probability of offloading it onto retail investors and pension funds at great profit. If they lose their VC money on 5 scams, 4 go bankrupt and 1 hits, they still make bank.

Atriev

Just hold META and stop fucking around with these shitco’s unless you’re VC.

PM_me_your_mcm

I mean I'm all for saying fuck Wall Street and "smart money" and the way that they can sort of create self-fulfilling prophecies with overwhelming leverage.  Absolutely. Buuuut ... In the past quarter they dropped NFT, which is probably smart, and they let Ryan invest cash in basically whatever he wants instead of doing stock buybacks.  So at this point they're basically a hedge fund/VC firm that sells used video game shit on the side.   Revenues are likely to be lower, none of what Ryan has done has convinced "smart money" that this is a serious venture, and where they fall on earnings feels like it comes down to how well Ryan invested in the past three months.  Which means he would be shooting for like a 13% return for the quarter.   I expect disappointment.

irate_wizard

It was only artificial in the sense that all their clients were VC investors which could read financial statements and knew there was a possibility of a run if everyone else was like them and could understand those statements.

Reddits_For_NBA

This is a fucking plant by Reddit or some VC backer don’t fall into this bullshit.

Kagenikakushiteru

I had access to this VC opportunity at 20-30c. I took some but wanted more. Bidded for more stock at 35c, but the guy reneged the deal and water 40c. Anyway it’s now $8.00 per share woot. I still made millions on the parcel I had tho

PlutosGrasp

Huh? It was already generating revenue and growing that revenue dramatically. What are you talking about? Reddit had no issue raising VC capital. https://variety.com/2021/digital/news/reddit-funding-round-10-billion-valuation-1235040079/amp/ $700m 2021. At the end of 2023 they still had a billion in cash: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1713445/000162828024012380/reddit-final424b4.htm#i1b9a579e78a34dfa99f7f26daeec195b_40 Stop making shit up.

TheDirtyDagger

Famous last words. Some VC will be using your $8500 to buy their sh*tty kid Gucci

barnz3000

This company that has NEVER made money, and relies on voluntary labour. Of which they have encouraged to buy their overpriced ridiculous IPO. This is a death sandwich, which exists purely as VC exit liquidity. And to make Spez rich.

22pabloesco22

I was around then too. And actually worked in tech as a youngin. ​ That shit ain't this. Not saying NVDA is a 1T or a 10T company, but the hype then was absurd. It was one big joke that let those that were in on it get real rich. Here's my example. Of my 20 or so newly out of college and jumping into tech jobs friends, 3/4 ended up taking jobs for companies at lesser money than I was making as a contractor by far. The carrot dangled was a large chunk of stocks. They'd pitch new hires the slide deck talking about the 3 year plan to go public. At that stage, the equity we're giving you as part of you comp plan will make you a millionare many times over. ALL those friends ended up wasting away 2-4 years of their lives with dead end companies that folded. They literally weren't making shit, just burning VC money. Fast forward to today, some of the most successful powerful companies on the planet are leading the charge on AI. SO it's not just vaporware. It's real shit, and it is being built up to be revolutionary, like it's meant to change how we live our day to day lives. Again, may or may not pan out to that extent, but lot of middle ground between vaporware and AI being the most revolutionary thing since options trading...

sbfdd

With crypto a founding team of 5 people + their VC control the premine and basically entire project. Fiat = governments print money Crypto = anyone can print money Bitcoin = no one can print money

ktaphfy

Yeah, no. VC minded president/CEO starting from McDonnell Douglas merger https://qz.com/1776080/how-the-mcdonnell-douglas-boeing-merger-led-to-the-737-max-crisis More than one + middle managers bean-counter oriented, not engineers by training, but cost cutters competing for promotion. (My interpretation of understanding as read)

BeardedMillenial

Yeah, it’s just another VC-backed exercise in really good marketing/advertising.

NonverbalKint

Holy shit imagine being this dumb. Their failures are experiments because they make so much money that they can treat themselves as both the VC and the startup. The products weren't great because the market didn't exist and if they didn't bother they're still rich. Android has 70% of the mobile phone market share, Google search has 91% of the market share. The pixel phone is one of the, if not the best, mobile phone ever made. Chrome has 65% of the market share. Microsoft bought into Open AI, they didn't innovate it, and now Apple follows suit. Microsoft automatically gets the market for corporate clients since the majority of the business world runs on SharePoint and office365, the copilot integrations as unstoppable. But when Google delivers on their consumer AI platform they will retain market dominance. Once tapped, the billions of YouTube videos and decades of delivering the most relevant content to people has the potential to completely change the web. You think the same hobby team that lit together google+ is going to be leading that charge? Hell no.

the_snook

It's entirely up to the company. How it goes is, they organise a private liquidity event i.e. find a buyer and negotiate a price, then open it up to current shareholders at their discretion. Maybe current employees get a taste, maybe they reach out to formers, maybe only institutional investors (VC and so forth) get to sell.

Wrong-Situation-7431

SOL has alot of VC investors, I wouldn't be surprised if it hits $1,000.

Jupman

VC company, They got nothing on them .

MarcatBeach

You dug much deeper than I did. I am old and my eyesight is not great. to read that stuff online takes effort. once I saw the .01 warrants being the basis of the offering and some of the parties doing it I was done. It would take more digging on the role of the VC's. the initial offering would have some of that buried in it. looks like anytime this goes up people cash out.

greytoc

I had looked through some of the Form 4 and 13f filings. Are you sure that a VC is considered an insider? I thought that VC's would be considered institutional investors and not insiders. There is at least 1 family office that I noticed. Regardless - you bring up an interesting point about the investors. One of the more interesting investors is a fund called NovaWulf Private Fund. I thought the name was coincidental and the fund probably has other relationships to both Beowulf and Terrawulf.

Salsalito_Turkey

Ah, yes, those damn "VC-funded" businesses that have been publicly traded for 22 years.

anotherbozo

This is the problem with VC funded businesses. They want never ending growth. These businesses will never be happy with being in the green with profits. They want green in growth every year which isn't sustainable.

Proper_Scholar4905

Probably day 2, but volatility will be high, and it will be at $50 on day 3. VC’s won’t let this fall before they can exit. Options writers and VC’s will win. The rest is WSB history.

Proper_Scholar4905

Last private investment was around $14-$18 a share last I checked. GL, but VC’s don’t have interest in bagholding…

dvdmaven

What can you expect when the executives have been draining the VC money for 15 years.

generouscookie1981

>Who knows what will this AI craze turn into, I wouldn't be surprised if it's a mini repeat of dot.com. Do I feel as certain about it as market ripping to new ATHs this year? No obviously. I feel much more confident about SPX and that's why I am primarily VOO. However, I am comfortable making a bet on AI because *the entirety of Silicon Valley is behind it*. When Brian Chesky, the CEO of ABNB said "The Valley stands behind Sam." He might as well have said the Valley stands behind AI. There are billions of investment and spend pouring into the space from all the big players plus TONS of money that will flow in from PE, VC, family offices that are blowing up: [Family offices have tripled since 2019, creating a new gold rush on Wall Street.](https://www.cnbc.com/2024/03/08/family-offices-tripled-creating-a-new-gold-rush-on-wall-street.html) >Experts say family offices now manage $6 trillion or more, and their ranks are growing. >The number of family offices in the world has tripled since 2019, setting off a new race among private equity firms, hedge funds and venture capital firms to attract their investments. There's no concrete sign at all that demand is satiating or they aren't dominant. Once there's a sign I will consider revising my thesis.

tazzy531

Used to be that startups that were valued at $1B were required to go public. Facebook was forced to go public even though they didn’t want to. This allowed public investors to take part in the growth afterwards. Nowadays, companies are staying private longer until all the growth has gone out and they can’t raise VC capital. Take for example Stripe. It’s now valued at $65B. Under the old rules, they would’ve had to go public years ago and the public would have earned the growth from $1B to $65B. Now when they go public this year(?), it’s hard to imagine that it grows 65x from here. Now with the example here with Reddit. They are going to go public at $6.4B. That’s 6x what the old rule would’ve been. As a result of this, you see less first day IPO pop. This is great for the company, insiders, early investors, and employees. But as a public investor don’t expect to make huge gains on IPOs.

BagofBabbish

If you buy on a lot of brokerages, not through a DSP, then usually they have restrictions on when you can sell. They don’t want people buying and flipping on day one, it makes them look bad as an issuer. Also you don’t need to be an insider to have a lockup. Let’s say you invested some money is a VC fund as a LP (read - you’re not on the board, you’re not receiving material inside info), you typically would have a six month lockup before you can sell your shares.

BagofBabbish

It’s not uncommon at all. If you’re a VC investor and one of the fund’s portfolio companies goes public, you’ll get a whole new account (usually at E Trade or Merrill Lynch) for every single one. What you’re talking about is how other brokerages let you use a raffle system to try to win a portion of the shares they were allocated. Totally different

Dichter2012

We should start the count when Reddit became an independent company after Conde decided to spun out Reddit again. The whole reason Reddit has to go IPO is because the VC needs the money for next round of investment. Their horizon is usually around 10 years.

bzl33

no VC is going to give them money so they have to go public

imposter22

Yeah i’m surprised Jack Dorsey didnt get investigated for the bank run… he told every big player to get their money out at that time, possibly coordinating the day to do it. He created the damn bank run… there is a conspiracy about it, but this asshat blew up twitter and all his VC friends to pull out their money at the same time. They should get his txt messages, twitter dms, and his phone records for the two weeks before the run. This dude is shady as fuck. I’ve met him, always asking what other guys have.. he is a one upper for sure. (That guy has this rare Ferrari, i need it too) no joke he is a piece of dogshit

leraning_rdear

If a VC or a company in the industry is the buyer, expect the mantra “do more with less”. Also expect profitability assessments by store and region. The bottom 10% may get shut down even if profitable. ROC is king. Good luck.

swampassOG

They have some sort of VC money pouring in before they mint. They buy and sell to themselves to create volume. Idk. Huge speculation on my part

oil1lio

ah. the VC strategy

Puzzled_Bath_984

NVidia is selling a lot of chips. Microsoft, Meta, Google, Apple all have giant piles of cash. VC investors gave piles of money to AI startups. This is all in anticipation of real revenue generating products based on AI.

generouscookie1981

I disagree but even if that's true, is this late mature TSLA or early? Is Silicon Valley, VC, PE support of AI spending going to start heading downhill from here or only ramping up? https://www.reddit.com/r/stocks/comments/1b9l1ex/rstocks_daily_discussion_fundamentals_friday_mar/ktxadek/

Heavy_Pumpkin6853

I think her husband is a VC guy by trade so she has some knowledgeable help in addition to insider info from congress.

RudeAndInsensitive

I have gone through 3 acquisitions at this point in my career as an employee of the acquired. You can count on the VC firm to cut staff between 5 and 12% within 18 months. If you're a liked and reasonable competent employee you won't be the one. If you have a lot of people floating around the org that have a lot of negative things to say about you.....ya you'll be cut

Brakonic

I work with a lot of VC backed companies. It doesn’t really matter for employees to be honest, most companies only have these different classes (preferred vs common) in the early stages and then they convert to common equity.

Available_Map_5369

SVB also had horrendous business practices that only promoted the small business/hyper volatile tech sector and VC world in Silicon Valley. They improperly insured their deposits. They announced an equity round because they got in trouble with regulators who approached them to meet said capital and deposit insurance requirements which scared their customer base - made up of vast majority of investors who watch the stock market everyday - and prompted them to attempt to liquidate their accounts overnight. NYCB doesn’t have that issue. They not greatly insured at 75-80% of their loan amounts but they have majority of their funds in long term assets in the commercial real estate sector. That’s in a ton of pain right now but that’s a relatively short term issue. Anyone who thinks that market isn’t going to rebound or pivot to a different model is fooling themselves. The FDIC is also continuing to insure all of these banks deposits until what March 11th or 12th next week… and wow look at that - NYCB’s equity round is wrapping up on the 11th. These are apples and sand level comparisons

Lykotic

Low Inventory Fee is a non-issue for well managed accounts. You can do forecasting yourself or Amazon is bringing over their own P70,80,90 forecasts to SC (already done for VC) The distribution fee can be removed by the seller if they ship smaller shipments to Amazon to the larger warehouse placement lists. The fee did increase, no doubt there, but it can be avoided by sellers IF they put it more work. Obviously, there'll be a cost to ship more items but on a per item basis it is much lower than having Amazon do the shipments. Amazon bigger concern is WMT's online marketplace. Not only is it right now a better experience for sellers but is growing at a much faster rate than Amazon and likely already stealing market share.

tke248

Another huge bit of news OpenAI looks like they are a customer/partner in another press release - "In addition to showcasing the impact of AIP on their business, customers at AIPCon will lead their own AIP Bootcamps. Speakers include 20+ newly-announced customers and partners — including Lennar, General Mills, Lowe’s, Cone Health, CSX, OpenAI, CAZ Investments, Parts Town, 8VC, and many others."

TacoGrease051

TL;DR: Unless Boeing purchases Spirit Aerosystems, I don’t see this company turning around. And even then, it’s going to take a long time. There’s not a lot of material news on the horizon that would move this stock in a positive direction. The rest: They delivered around 500 aircraft last year (YOY increase over 2022, but still below prepandemic) while Airbus was over 800. Boeing has about 5,000 orders while Airbus has over 8,000. Certain bets aren’t paying off - Boeing invested a ton of time and money trying to reinvent the wheel with the mostly composite 787, and it turns out that an Airbus using traditional techniques and materials with the same engines is almost just as efficient (CFM LEAP-1). Single aisle short haul jets (like the 737) are the bread and butter of both Airbus and Boeing, and Airbus is also out-producing Boeing almost 2:1 right now. You may have heard that the FAA has imposed a limit on how many 737s Boeing can build until they’re satisfied with Boeing’s quality control - that is true. But Boeing wasn’t even hitting that number *before* the Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 incident in January. In addition to the high profile 737 MAX crashes in 2017 and 2018, Boeing more recently discovered manufacturing defects on new MAX jets last year (again, QC issues with Spirit Aerosystems. One was poor QC that led to difficulty attaching the vertical stabilizer on the tail, and the second - discovered from that error - was mis-drilled holes on the aft pressure bulkhead IIRC). Boeing is struggling to get exemptions for certifying the 737 MAX 7 and MAX 10. Until Boeing can figure out the 737 MAX series and reliably deliver it to customers, they will keep bleeding. Honestly you could stop reading here; solving the 737 issue both now and for what follows it are the primary challenges facing Boeing’s core business. But if you’re still reading: Longer term, Boeing put its “New Midsize Airliner” (NMA) program on ice in 2020 - before the pandemic. There’s talk of that program coming back online, but more pressing is developing a true successor to the 737. Slapping new wings and engines on it likely won’t be enough to comply with coming efficiency regs; Boeing has already said the 737 MAX family will be the last of the 737s (a design itself rooted in the now-ancient 707). New engines keep getting bigger and bigger (larger diameter = higher bypass ratio = greater efficiency), and the 737 is already struggling to accommodate the CFM LEAP-1s (hence all the software and workarounds that helped contribute to the crashes in 2017/2018). The 737 was originally designed with low bypass engines (very small engine diameter) that allowed it to sit very close to the ground. The massive 777X was originally supposed to be start being delivered in 2020. It’s 2024 and that still hasn’t happened. AFAIK, there are still zero orders for the 777X by domestic carriers. The 747 production line shutdown almost a decade ago. That was a huge cash cow for Boeing for decades. The 767 and 757 are also dead or dying (with the exception of a couple military programs - but we’ll get to that). On the government/military side, Boeing is hemorrhaging money on fixed-price contracts. Over the past decade, I think they’ve lost around $12B-14B. The only successfully managed program that comes to mind is the Navy’s P-8 Poseidon (anti-submarine variant of the 737-800). T-7 Red Hawk jet trainer. KC-46 Pegasus (aerial refueled based on the 767). MQ-25 Stingray (unmanned carrier-based tanker for the Navy). VC-25B (“Air Force One”). Starliner (their competitor to SpaceX Dragon). These programs have all turned into major money pits for Boeing. They walked away from the E-4B Nightwatch (heavily modified 747 “doomsday” plane program, which should have been a slam dunk for them. The MQ-28 Ghost Bat (unmanned fighter) and E-7 Wedgetail (airborne early warning aircraft) seem to be doing decent, but I think it’s too early to tell. Boeing and Lockheed are in competition to be the prime contractors on the F-22 replacement (called “Next Generation Air Dominance,” or NGAD), but it’s kind of hard to see Boeing getting that contract since they’ve been out of the fighter game for so long. So when you step back and take all that together…it’s probably not a great picture.

OrwellWhatever

In 2017 or so, I tried to dissuade a VC from dumping money into self-driving cars because, imo, we're still 30 years away, but they were like, "Self driving cars will be here in two or three years, and this company I want to invest in is on the cutting edge!" That company folded two years ago, and the investor took a real bath We're so much further away from actual world-changing AI than anyone wants to admit. I was on another post about quantum computing a couple days ago, and, now that I'm thinking about it, quantum computing will likely be here before the type of AI everyone's expecting will be

_mattske

I agree with your statement about multiple "pops," and the idea of a boiling pot of water so to speak, rather than the traditional idea of an "everything bubble," or one gigantic bubble gum bubble that pops all at once. I remember telling my wife back in 2017 - 2018 that similarly, I viewed our economic danger being more something like a collection of mico-bubbles, which I saw in the private sector with VC-backed startups which were mostly trash concepts with no plan or concern for profits. It was infecting every industry, and the SaaS mindset was beginning to cause everybody to act in a dot-com type mentality where you could inflate the valuation of companies in order to induce a publicly traded stock to acquire it for exponentially more than it would be worth. At the time I predicted that these acquired private equity monstrosities would be chiefly responsible for the eventual collapse, because none of them would genuinely pan out the way they were projected. Rather than the supposed key or core businesses of companies like Apple failing, I thought it would be the underlying anticompetitive acquisitions they resorted to in order to decapitate their potential competition from otherwise more meaningful IPO's. That's why these companies like Microsoft eventually seed those potentially "disruptive" companies or concepts. However, the underlying lack of cash (by ratio to market capitalization, not overall dollars) at the Magnificent 7 for example, is constantly a brewing insolvency issue that is always explained away, avoided, or addressed by some other massive borrowing event that nobody notices. Their collective collapse in 2022 should have raised major alarms. All the talk about a "soft landing" and erasing the reality of the situation has led to a point where, metaphorically speaking, the economy is almost pulling up too fast on the stick while trying to escape from a cave, and rather than hitting the ground, it is about to collide with the ceiling. We often think of the plane metaphor of the economy as if it is flying in open air. But if it was instead, more like flying through the Death Star or something of that nature you can see that you would not want to rocket upwards on an indeterminate time table, even if it looks good.

Available-Ad3635

Agreed based on OPs doomsday, cathart-enthused, 254 day account. I do hope he has good luck at his VC firm though

brown_burrito

Not defending them in any way, but Paul Pelosi is a successful VC in his own right. If you are in tech and see the trends and have the capital, why wouldn’t you invest in something that you see as having a huge upside?

babalu_babalu

I think a little from everywhere. Wages are up and the job market is holding steady so people are still contributing to their 401ks and etf’s. Residential real estate market is chugging along despite higher rates so home owners net worth is high. Big companies and wealthy people from all over the world have been getting ~5% risk free for the past 2 years in t-bills. VC is rolling again especially throwing money at anything AI related.

cryptoislife_k

This is not some bs bubble as the last 5 times, this is the AI copium gigachad McKinsey gets to lay off your entire workforce next and replace it with AI utopia get wet dream of every god damn VC angel trustfund together with falling rates and diversity risk boards who don't have a fucking clue anymore what they are doing.

FightOnForUsc

The World Wide Web was invented 20 years after UCLA and Stanford used the internet. If you say PC people mean personal computer not programmable general. But then I would point you to https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ENIAC#:~:text=ENIAC%20(%2Fˈ%C9%9Bni,digital%20computer%2C%20completed%20in%201945. I’ll agree that Europe has done SOME stuff but that given their population level and GDP outpaced the US for a long time, they have not been as inventive in the technology space. Probably largely do to fewer research universities, lower government spending on military that funds random programs, and less VC funding. Also potentially combined with a different view of life. Americans put their careers first. When describing themself they’ll often use their work as a part of that. I think Europeans on average are less focused on that. Which is probably good for everyone’s life but I do think it also likely reduces the pace of innovation

lmao_just_lmao

He's wrong and/or lying, but it doesn't matter. When looking at the short term (ie. a few years) It doesn't matter if generative AI gets significant adoption for real use cases. All of the demand for Nvidia's hardware is coming from capital investment right now. It's not coming from actual real world use. It's from AI startups using VC and bigtech funding. This will continue for the short term. Next stage is a strong IPO market bigtech and VCs are preparing. That will pull in capital from Wall Street to allow the VCs to fund the next round of startups. Also, there is a risk that more useful AI software will be developed to take advantage of the powerful hardware which is being produced now thanks to all this capital investment. This could just make a new plateau and you just get shit on forever.

globogymenthusiest

Okay dude whatever you say. Just saying what is true in many VC circles and the perception of these companies in these circles. Indians do have nepotism rooted in their culture. They have an active caste system. It is written into their law. These are all factual statements and they effect many companies around the globe.