So, if I’m following: Banks are lending to private equity firms to fund purchases of businesses.
Many of these businesses are SaaS which means their valuations are tumbling.
It seems possible that valuations tumble so much that the private equity owner no longer has any incentive to operate the business, bc all future cash flows will belong to the bank. What happens in practice then? Will banks actually step in and take operational control? Will the banks renegotiate terms such that the private equity owners are incentivized
to continue as stewards? Or, will they prefer to force a business sale immediately?
The author keeps saying, over and over, that the reason this is a good bet is because "the downside is capped and the upside is asymmetric" as if that's some ground-breaking realization.
Sorry, but obviously the downside is capped. The downside of virtually any marketing investment is capped at the cost of the media buy...And, the upside being "asymmetric" isn't some saving grace. What matters is the likelihood that you actually realize that asymmetric upside. And, nowhere in the article does he talk about Ro's estimated success likelihoods or actual outcomes.
In short, he's basically saying:
- I made a bet
- It costs me something ("capped downside")
- There's a potential payout ("asymmetric upside")
- I have no idea whether this is positive expected value
If they really only raised $1.7b, per Crunchbase, then this seems to me like a very good outcome for everyone involved except its late stage investors. And, even for the late stage investors, they're breaking even.
Words are cheap. I really wish there was a way to incentivize authors like this to put their money where their mouth is, before seeking attention for their ideas.
Surprised to see this upvoted because the takeaway is completely incorrect, and based on the anecdotal evidence of one advertiser.
As someone who spends seven figures every month on Google ads, what’s much more likely to be happening here is that the individual advertiser is either getting outcompeted or they’re executing ads poorly.
Google ads revenue in the US continues to grow every quarter. And, since advertisers will generally invest in ads until the last dollar is break even, it’s likely that the total value advertisers unlock through Google ads is growing as well. Whether that’s true or not, the notion that value generated for advertisers is “dead” is absurd.
As this incident unfolds, what’s the best way to estimate how many additional hours it’s likely to last? My intuition is that the expected remaining duration increases the longer the outage persists, but that would ultimately depend on the historical distribution of similar incidents. Is that kind of data available anywhere?
Whether it's appropriate to "force someone to take it" depends on the degree of pain being caused.
There's some threshold of pain over which it's reasonable to consider major restructuring of society, and it could be useful to have a discussion on where that threshold is, but the fact that you're comparing your current state to being in a Nazi labor camp doesn't make me think that's a good use of my time.
The disillusionment & accompanied emotional pain described by Kacynski simply doesn't pass the bar for me, especially when a bit of meditation and dedication to your mental health will bring happiness.
IMO, the alternatives are all based on a reframing of mindset versus a change in external environment.
My understanding is that most of Kacynski’s disillusionment was born out of:
- a recognition of how artificial most people’s values and goals are
- an inability to find authentic & fulfilling values and goals
- an innate urge to be useful and important
Put another way, Kacynski didn’t want to be like the brainwashed masses that chase status, approval, and riches. But, when he looked around for better things to spend his time on, he didn’t find any bc technology is so advanced.
I think the alternative to burning everything down is learning how to disconnect from the need to feel important and useful. It’s this inability to disconnect from the need to be useful and authentic that ultimately causes the disillusionment.
The ability to do so starts with an acceptance of the absurdity of life and a release of one’s ego. To put it colloquially, learning to not take things so seriously.
My takeaway from Kacynski’s manifesto is that he makes an astute observation about the root causes of unhappiness, but then proposes an absurd solution.
The astute observation is that a lot of unhappiness is driven by over-socialization and a commitment to inauthentic, subjective values.
The solution, to tear down technology to force mankind to work on more primitive goals, only makes sense if there are no alternatives.
Thankfully there are many alternatives. First and foremost, I think people like Ted just need to realize that the yearning to be important and useful is natural, but something you can let go of if you stop taking life so seriously.
Well, to start with, you're exaggerating. His life will meaningfully change (perhaps for the worse, by his standards), but his life won't be "destroyed" -- at least not by any reasonable standard. There are plenty of well-known billionaires who are perfectly happy.
To put this another way: is the search for knowledge immoral, if discovering that knowledge will inadvertently harm a person? That's sort of a deep question -- one which doesn't have a definitive answer, but your comment preaches as though it did.
I get that it's popular to shit on Facebook and its CEO, but a lot of you seem to be dismissing the metaverse vision out of hand.
It seems obvious to me that humans will eventually spend a significant amount of time in VR. The question is not if but when.
As tech advances, eventually, VR environments will feel close to identical to IRL environments. And, when that happens, there is no reason to bear the commute costs of travelling to IRL environments.
One thing that's bothered me is that YC doesn't actively help its founders pursue early exits. YC will support your decision to take an early exit if you find one, but they rarely help you find your way to one.
There's a whole world of PE that will acquire business for 5-15x EBITDA, but you won't hear anyone at YC talking about that even though those sort of outcomes are life changing for first-time founders.
> If I was to start a new company again, I'd still apply for YC again.
Once you go through YC once, you have access to all the information and alumni community in perpetuity (via Bookface). I think it's natural to want to go through YC again as a form of reciprocation (for all the value you received the first time), but you might find that the value-maximizing route is to take capital from other sources if you go to bat again.
I think it’s safe to assume any highly evolved alien species will have moral constructs that support self-preservation.
Whether those morals extend to preserving other intelligent life forms (I.e. humans) seems unlikely since the prosperity of other life forms will inevitably lead to more competition for scarce resources.
The fact that human moral constructs apply to other intelligent species seems to be a bug that arises solely from the fact that we’re currently capable of out competing all other intelligent species.