Venture Capital - Silicon Valley Ponzi Scheme - Chamath Palihapitiya
MAK - Mudassir Akber Khan1 HN recommender · recommended in 1 month, 2020-2023
309K views · 6 years ago · interview · evergreen
A 13-minute clip from This Week in Startups in which Chamath Palihapitiya describes venture capital as a Ponzi-like scheme driven by fees and inflated valuations among VCs.
Cited in threads about startups, VC and private equity as an insider's description of how VC economics work, though commenters note he is self-serving.
45:39Chamath Palihapitiya on rebuilding Social Capital & Silicon Valley ponzi scheme
This Week in Startups
160K views • 8 years ago
30:13SpaceX IPO Scandal
Patrick Boyle
1.4M views • 7 months ago
1:12:20Chris Sacca of Lowercase Capital - TWiST #291
This Week in Startups
108K views • 14 years ago
1:12:43Caml Trading
Yaron Minsky
55K views • 14 years ago
17:58The Cult of Conformity in Silicon Valley
Y Combinator
96K views • 3 years ago
1:23:58Guy Kawasaki: The Top 10 Mistakes of Entrepreneurs
UC Berkeley Haas
1.4M views • 13 years ago
1:29:42Chris Sacca of Lowercase Capital Pt. 2- TWiST #295
This Week in Startups
53K views • 14 years ago
56:16Chamath Palihapitiya, Founder and CEO Social Capital, on Money as an Instrument of Change
Stanford Graduate School of Business
3.6M views • 8 years ago
55:18Foundation 07 // Chris Sacca
Kevin Rose
58K views • 15 years ago
50:42China's Bonkers Bike-share Bubble
Asianometry
365K views • 10 months ago
23:08The mathematician who cracked Wall Street | Jim Simons
TED
2.9M views • 11 years ago
31:42SpaceX: The Biggest Money Loser in IPO History
Patrick Boyle
2.2M views • 5 months ago
6:17Warren Buffett: Bitcoin Is An Asset That Creates Nothing | CNBC
CNBC
1.3M views • 8 years ago
10:40This Ponzi Scheme Might END Suburban Prosperity
Strong Towns
324K views • 3 years ago
9:39Why American Cities Are Broke - The Growth Ponzi Scheme [ST03]
Not Just Bikes
3.8M views • 5 years ago
46:58A new look at active vs passive (Michael Green)
Bridge Alternatives
26K views • 6 years ago
2:31:44This is Financial Advice
Folding Ideas
8.4M views • 3 years ago
47:11Peter Thiel on being a contrarian
This Week in Startups
299K views • 11 years ago
1:53Buy, Borrow, Die: How America's Ultrawealthy Stay That Way
ProPublica
475K views • 5 years ago
8:09Crypto CEO Accidentally Describes Ponzi Scheme
Coffeezilla
3.3M views • 4 years ago
6 comments from Hacker News
Yeh he was setting up another funding funnel MS -> OpenAI -> his AI chips ▶ 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.
Not a new understanding. Chamath Palihapitiya talked about this in 2019, and others before then although I don't have references. ▶ 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.
> 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. ▶ this video
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): ▶ 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.
VCs also get paid by getting other VCs to evaluate their companies as more valuable in a sort of Ponzi scheme: ▶ this video
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: ▶ this video