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Venture Capital - Silicon Valley Ponzi Scheme - Chamath Palihapitiya

MAK - Mudassir Akber Khan

1.4K subscribers • 1 video on Hallway

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  • Recommended by 1 person: 1 on Hacker News.
  • Presented by Chamath Palihapitiya, venture capitalist
  • An opinion. It argues one side of a question engineers disagree on.

Beginner. No background in the topic needed.

308K views6 years ago1 recommendation

Careers and interviewsStartupsThe tech industry

Chamath Palihapitiya explains how the venture capital ecosystem can function like a Ponzi scheme driven by fees and inflated valuations.

Courtesy: This Week In Startups

Why it's here

1 person recommends this

What people say. Frequently cited by engineers to explain the unsustainable dynamics and misaligned incentives of venture capital in the startup world.

nowherebeenon Hacker News • Recommends

On “How to Start a Startup (2014)”

> all this money and all this failure, its going to end badly, these investors are gonna get burnt No, I think all these startups employees with families to feed are going to be out of a job. VCs fund startups that shouldn’t have been funded in the first place. They create a market that artificially props up unsustainable businesses. This video is a good explanation of how the VC world actually works. link to this video
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Reedxon Hacker News • Mentions

On “Lime shuts in 12 markets, lays off around 100”

It seems that a lot of VC is a multivariate ponzi scheme of sorts, which might explain some of it. If they're making fees regardless, then they just need to show/push fast initial growth to attract more layers of investment and it doesn't necessarily need to make long term sense. Chamath Palihapitiya describes this here: link to this video
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ibeckermayeron Hacker News • Mentions

On “Lime shuts in 12 markets, lays off around 100”

VCs also get paid by getting other VCs to evaluate their companies as more valuable in a sort of Ponzi scheme: link to this video
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crypticaon Hacker News • Mentions

On “Fuck You Startup World (2016)”

Let's not ignore the 'minor' detail that the entire space is a ponzi scheme to begin with (coming from Chamath Palihapitiya; a billionaire who was one of the first Facebook employees): link to this video And let's not ignore that the entire financial system within which this ponzi scheme operates is also a giant ponzi scheme: link So the startup world is literally a ponzi scheme within a ponzi scheme.
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jiveturkeyon Hacker News • Mentions

On “Amundi warns that parts of private equity market resemble ‘Ponzi schemes’”

Not a new understanding. Chamath Palihapitiya talked about this in 2019, and others before then although I don't have references. link to this video Warning, video is self-serving but simplistically, this is part of it. To be clear, the VCs understand what they are doing. They aren't fleecing themselves.
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stillwithiton Hacker News • Mentions

On “More on Sam Altman's Ouster from OpenAI”

Yeh he was setting up another funding funnel MS -> OpenAI -> his AI chips link to this video Make it appear on paper like there’s proper separation of concerns but really building a web to form monopoly with MS’s backing because they can’t get in trouble if some startup is doing it. Just more shell company games to play the system, screw everyone else by using their churches to claim dominion over all of tech. These guys are too obvious now. The elders who don’t know better are dying off leaving behind a more technically literate voter base.
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