This Week in Startups
1 HN recommender · recommended in 4 months, 2018–2022
45:39 · 160K views · Oct 13, 2018
Chamath Palihapitiya talks with Jason Calacanis about how he bought into the mythology of Silicon Valley, which he calls a Ponzi scheme, and about rebuilding Social Capital. He urges founders to grow slowly and build what matters.
HN cites it for Chamath's claim that venture-backed growth resembles a Ponzi scheme, especially when startups spend heavily on big-tech advertising.
4 comments from Hacker News
I really liked this video featuring Chamath Palihapitiya[1]. It's essentially a rant about most of VC being a ponzi scheme: this video [1] (from Wikipedia) Chamath Palihapitiya an is a venture capitalist and the founder and CEO of Social Capital. Palihapitiya was an early senior executive at Facebook, joining the company in 2007 and leaving in 2011. He is a minority stakeholder and board member of the Golden State Warriors.
Not really. Just because they exit at a later stage doesn't mean its not a ponzi scheme. Chamath Palihapitiya certainly disagrees with you ( this video ). Skyhigh valuations with no product market fit and no path to revenue certainly sounds like one to me. Many startups burn money to acquire customers, but churn is high because they don't have PM fit. It becomes an endless cycle of raising to acquire more customers. Once the money stops, someone will eventually be holding the bag.
It would seem that softbanks backing by the Saudi brutal regime should give Silicon Valley idealistic founders moment of pause before accepting their investment. WeWork founders banned meat from their office meals can they really accept to be owned by this fund? Once the SoftBank money stops flowing does the chamath described Ponzi scheme stop causing the whole thing Venture backed growth story to unravel? [LINK] this video
Chamath Palihapitiya talked about this problem in an interview from 2018. Many tech startups spend 0.40c of every VC dollar with FB/Google/Amazon. Here is the original interview: this video