It's not what I said but it's fairly obvious that money is like steroids. You can't turn a donkey into a race horse but any semi-competent person can be successful with enough cash injection and network to get good advice.
> You can't turn a donkey into a race horse but any semi-competent person can be successful with enough cash injection and network to get good advice.
You've obviously never actually started a company. Talk to me when you have. People with money flame out every day. A huge percentage of companies that do receive VC funding fail. Way, way more than half. An infinitesimal fraction of companies VCs invest in go on to be worth more than a billion dollars. An even smaller fraction of those go on to be worth more than 10 billion dollars. Jack Dorsey created two of them. There are only a handful of people on earth who have done that. And when I say a handful, I mean like you can literally count them on your hands.
Doesn't this run counter to even conventional wisdom about VC? 25-30% of all VC-backed startups liquidate all assets, and 75% return only the original investment.
That is a consequence of two things. 1) the all or nothing approach to business that VC backed startups take and 2) the lack of quality network for many founders. It's why I specifically mentioned network for good advice. If you look at the patterns emerging from silicon valley with the PayPal mafia and even YC itself there is a clear advantage to be had from A) access to immense amounts of cash coupled with B) a network of people who have been there and done that. I find it very hard to believe that white upper middle class males are remarkable for their genius intellect as successful founder profiles would have you believe if looked at in isolation. From a purely critical perspective there is a wide range of intellect levels on display amongst unicorn founders.
So, again, to be clear, you believe that a person with access to:
A) A "network", i.e. is friends with talented people
And has access to:
B) "Immense amounts of cash". How much cash? 1 million? 10? 100?
Can easily earn a 10x-100x return on that money? You think turning 10 million into 100 million is easy? Do you know how many people are trying to do that? Do you have any idea how difficult that is even with access to a network and cash?
Money is extremely cheap. The biggest problem in silicon valley right now isn't access to capital - it's that there's too much capital chasing too few good ideas. VCs are desperate for something worth investing in, precisely because of how hard it is to create a good company.
