It is dissapointing to see how frequently VCs invest hundreds of millions of dollars into fraudulent companies. This is very different from investing in legit companies that don't work.
It often seems like you are more likely to raise VC by being a fraud than by being a responsible person who wants to do something positive in this world.
> It often seems like you are more likely to raise VC by being a fraud than by being a responsible person who wants to do something positive in this world.
You can't 10x - 100x and get an exit on a responsible person who wants to do something positive in this world.
I have been very brand loyal to claude also but the new gemini model is amazing and I have been using it exclusively for all of my coding for the last week.
I am excited to try out this new model. I actually want to stay brand loyal to antropic because I like the people and the values they express.
I worked at a startup where I joined as the second employee before they raised any money and I basically got 0.5% of the company. They went on to raise over $100 million in VC.
I got $0 for my equity. Start ups have SO many ways to screw employees out of their equity.
The most basic is that you have options that you are not allowed to sell during equity rounds. If you accept them then you need to pay the strike price and they count as taxable income even though you got shares instead of money so you just lose a lot of money.
Say what you will about Elon, but at Space X employees are allowed to sell their shares for actual money at regular intervals. Very few start ups that succeed allow their employees to do that.
90% of startups that succeed just want to grind down their employees rather than pay them the equity they earned.
At both startups we bought our shares early using Section 83(b) of the IRS tax code. That first year when we bought the shares I had to file extra paperwork but it shifts the tax rate to long term capital gains.
So I ended up writing checks of $60 and $100 to buy thousands of shares at $0.0001 a share. I left both startups before they went under but everyone lost that small amount. When people ask me how much money I made at the startup I joke that I lose $60.
It takes time to grow capacity to meet growing revenue/usage. As parent is saying, if you are in a growth market at time T with capacity X, you would rather have more people using it even if that means they can each use less.
Agreed, hence why he scammed people into believing he was in it for the "good of humanity" - 1. Get donors 2. Get bright minds in the space (e.g. Ilya) with such ideals to work for him.
I have had a similar experience. I build wordpress websites and ChatGPT has allowed me to extend their functionality a great deal without needing to learn how to code PHP.
Location: Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Remote: Yes
Willing to relocate: No
Technologies: Google Ads
Résumé/CV: I am a freelance digital marketer. I spend 90% of my time helping small and medium businesses with their google ads. I am really good at it because I focus on just that one thing. I think you need to focus on just one thing to really master it. You can learn more about me at AdsByJustin.com.
Email: [email protected]
I agree with everything you are saying, but the stock price is up 6x over the last 10 years and revenue is still growing 13% a year so nobody at google is going to listen to any of this.
Basically ad dollars have continued to transition from old media to digital media over the last decade+ and that mass migration has created enough revenue to cover up all of Google's core problems.
The reality is that this firehose of money is what allowed those core problems to grow & fester. That and the practice of using TVCs for as much as possible, to the point where nearly every process that's documented is outsourced, and often no one inside really understands how things work anymore.
