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Dr. Fishopolis posted:This is a problem I've had in both Massachusetts and New York. Even when it was possible to purchase individual plans, the premiums started at $800/month. Obamacare was a major factor in me being able to start my own business, and if it goes away before I can expand enough to enroll in a group plan, I'm not sure what the future looks like. Same. I've been self-employed for most of my adult life and I just never had health coverage pre-ACA, despite making fairly good money at times. That's probably what I have to look forward to if I lose access to my coverage.
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Nov 18, 2016 23:05
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JawnV6 posted:I never understood what cachet "legendary investor" is supposed to carry. They lucked out once, most likely not due to any inherent understanding of the market or skill, and after a good exit have more money to put on stupider/riskier bets. You're kind of conflating a couple things, because VC investment doesn't work like that -- they return all of the money they make to the LPs when an exit happens, minus their fees, and then they raise another fund to invest once the money in their current fund runs out. Having a lucky break doesn't really help them to continue to make money except that the marketing value of their success might allow them to raise more for the next fund which might let them get a better risk spread. If they have a REALLY good exit, it might mean more founders will have heard of them so they'll get better access to deal flow -- or it might work against them because those founders are more likely to have heard of them and heard what sacks of poo poo they are so they stay away. This is part of what makes VCs have such terrible returns as an asset class. Success just doesn't really snowball unless you get to, say, DFJ size where you can make 10 years of lovely deals and still be considered a marquee name. That being said, there is a difference between someone who's a big name because they made one really good bet (Jim Breyer) and somebody who's had fairly consistent success for more than 20 years (Fred Wilson, Marc Andreessen)
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Nov 18, 2016 23:35
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Baby Babbeh posted:That being said, there is a difference between someone who's a big name because they made one really good bet (Jim Breyer) and somebody who's had fairly consistent success for more than 20 years (Fred Wilson, Marc Andreessen)
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Nov 18, 2016 23:42
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Baby Babbeh posted:If they have a REALLY good exit, it might mean more founders will have heard of them so they'll get better access to deal flow IMO deal flow comes from founders telling other founders that you were helpful in a bunch of ways beyond the cheque. a16z are the epitome of this full-service approach in the valley. That you saw something in Instagram and had an opportunity to invest doesn't really mean your money is any more useful to them, since they already believe they're building a billion-dollar business. A string of decent exits is more valuable than one big one in a lot of ways, because it means other VCs are more likely to join later rounds on the strength of your brand. I'm certainly in the bottom quintile of company-picking at this point (they say it costs $10M to train a VC), but "nice, helpful, has useful experience" means a fair number of founders want to work with me whether we invest or not. My firm does have a strong brand in our geography, but it's not based on exits.
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Nov 18, 2016 23:46
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Arsenic Lupin posted:It has always impressed me that Andreessen went from a once-in-a-lifetime score, Mosaic/Netscape, to a successful career as an investor. Many startup zillionaires try and fail. He also did Opsware, which did a down-round IPO and still ended up in a good place. I don't agree with his politics at all, but he's loving smart and has always been nice to me at least. E: sorry double
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Nov 18, 2016 23:48
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Subjunctive posted:E: also, VCs don't invest the exit proceeds, except in small recycling cases, unless you count them coming back via enriched LPs. Baby Babbeh posted:You're kind of conflating a couple things, because VC investment doesn't work like that -- they return all of the money they make to the LPs when an exit happens, minus their fees, and then they raise another fund to invest once the money in their current fund runs out. Having a lucky break doesn't really help them to continue to make money except that the marketing value of their success might allow them to raise more for the next fund which might let them get a better risk spread. If they have a REALLY good exit, it might mean more founders will have heard of them so they'll get better access to deal flow -- or it might work against them because those founders are more likely to have heard of them and heard what sacks of poo poo they are so they stay away. This is part of what makes VCs have such terrible returns as an asset class. Success just doesn't really snowball unless you get to, say, DFJ size where you can make 10 years of lovely deals and still be considered a marquee name.  That said, I've specifically been prepped for meetings with phrases like "X was an early investor in (streaming company)" when their pet idea was being peddled. I never really saw the quality connection between the two.
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Nov 19, 2016 00:18
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JawnV6 posted:That said, I've specifically been prepped for meetings with phrases like "X was an early investor in (streaming company)" when their pet idea was being peddled. I never really saw the quality connection between the two. What you really need to know is what they passed on. Early investor tells you about a specific edge in their professional graph, but if you have a big seed fund you can invest in a *lot* of startups as long as you're OK just abandoning them after the cheque. Advisor means more than investor, to me -- the best investors are both.
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Nov 19, 2016 00:26
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Subjunctive posted:IMO deal flow comes from founders telling other founders that you were helpful in a bunch of ways beyond the cheque. a16z are the epitome of this full-service approach in the valley. Oh of course. This is 100 percent true. VC is a referral-based industry and your private reputation matters far more than headlines to your deal flow. But if you can clear the low bar of being a great partner to your portfolio companies, headlines also help. As you said, that's why there's a difference between a16z and a lot of other firms -- they have a very strong brand built on a lot of successful exits which might attract founders and other investors to want to deal with them, but then when you get closer you learn that they're also good dudes with an unusual focus on total value add. It takes both to build a career. Assholes with one big hit don't tend to have much longevity. Baby Babbeh fucked around with this message at 01:17 on Nov 19, 2016 |
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Nov 19, 2016 01:15
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Another sign that there's a housing bubble that needs to pop: a 1986 2700-foot ranch in my ordinary (i.e. not Menlo Park, Atherton, or Palo Alto) Peninsula town just sold for $2,300,000. So far, so Silicon Valley. But it sold for $300K over asking price after 8 days on the market. My incredibly informed and you should entirely invest based on this opinion: When dot-com bubble 2.0 (or is it a point release? I lose track) pops, watch housing prices drop. But they won't entirely collapse because of pent-up demand and people saying, "I'll never be able to find a $1.9M house again!"
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Nov 19, 2016 02:32
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Asking price means nothing.
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Nov 19, 2016 02:41
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quote:Another sign that there's a housing bubble that needs to pop: a 1986 2700-foot ranch in my ordinary (i.e. not Menlo Park, Atherton, or Palo Alto) Peninsula town just sold for $2,300,000. So far, so Silicon Valley. But it sold for $300K over asking price after 8 days on the market. You don't happen to live in Burlingame or San Mateo, do you? The property prices here are loving ridiculous. I'm in pharma (drugbro?) and even with all the money in that field, it'd be two years of pre-tax salary to make even a 20% down payment on a condo in my town. Almost four years for the median single-family.
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Nov 19, 2016 02:42
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Subjunctive posted:Asking price means nothing. Sundae posted:You don't happen to live in Burlingame or San Mateo, do you? The property prices here are loving ridiculous. I'm in pharma (drugbro?) and even with all the money in that field, it'd be two years of pre-tax salary to make even a 20% down payment on a condo in my town. Almost four years for the median single-family. * and really, REALLY pissed me off by not even addressing where the people who used to live in that trailer park now lived
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Nov 19, 2016 02:49
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Arsenic Lupin posted:Nope, elsewhere. The NYT had an article about Tesla owners living in a trailer park in MV* and one of the common responses was "If you could afford that Tesla, you could have afforded a down payment on a house." Ahahahahahaha. This can't continue forever of course, or perhaps even for long. The tech bubble may finally give, the recent shift in local politics to be more pro-housing might create significant numbers of units, mortgage rates will likely rise, and so on.
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Nov 19, 2016 03:00
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ShadowHawk posted:This can't continue forever of course, or perhaps even for long. The tech bubble may finally give, the recent shift in local politics to be more pro-housing might create significant numbers of units, mortgage rates will likely rise, and so on. e: How successful has Google Ventures been? Or does anybody outside Google even know? Arsenic Lupin fucked around with this message at 03:31 on Nov 19, 2016 |
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Nov 19, 2016 03:04
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Arsenic Lupin posted:IIRC the Fed have already said they're raising rates in December.
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Nov 19, 2016 03:46
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FlamingLiberal posted:Yes and if you add to that a very unstable political situation here and a very high likelihood that the GOP pulls a lot of government money out of the economy and kills healthcare for many people, it's going to be hard not to see a burst bubble in 2017. BUT MAH PROPERTY VALUES.
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Nov 19, 2016 04:03
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If the tech bubble ends up bursting because of Republican malfeasance, I will be pissed. This thing has been going on for too long that I want the bubble to burst purely on its own merits, without anyone else to blame it on.
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Nov 19, 2016 22:00
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Morroque posted:If the tech bubble ends up bursting because of Republican malfeasance, I will be pissed. This thing has been going on for too long that I want the bubble to burst purely on its own merits, without anyone else to blame it on.
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Nov 19, 2016 22:33
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Arsenic Lupin posted:Side note: the only reason my husband was able to take a year off for his (unsuccessful) startup was that part of his severance package from his previous employer was a year's health insurance. I suspect, without evidence, that Obamacare made it possible for other entrepeneurs to take the risk of going salaryless without also taking the risk of catastrophic health bills, and further without the risk of becoming uninsurable thereafter. I've heard the same thing from VCs in the northeast who started funding more Canadian companies.
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Nov 19, 2016 22:36
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That really sucks, though I guess it's good for Canada and good for giant American tech companies who don't have to worry about losing talent or gaining competitors. Bad for the overall American economy and for entrepreneurship down South though.
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Nov 19, 2016 23:27
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"Automated Inference on Criminality using Face Images" https://arxiv.org/pdf/1611.04135v1.pdf It's OK though: they controlled for race, gender, and facial expression.
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Nov 20, 2016 21:31
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That is one of the worst study designs / justifications I think I've ever seen. Holy poo poo. Can I assume, from the lack of any publication reference and it being on arxiv, that it underwent all the peer review scrutiny of, let's say, my grandmother's secret curry recipe?
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Nov 20, 2016 22:30
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Arxiv stuff is often pre-prints for conferences and journals (which gets around the journals' restrictions on distribution of the material), so it's hard to tell. I don't know one Chinese university from another, either.
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Nov 20, 2016 22:42
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quote:Having obtained the above strong empirical evidences for the validity of automated face-induced inference on criminality, one cannot resist the following intriguing ques- tion: what features of a human face betray its owner’s propensity for crimes? In fact, the same question has capti- vated professionals (e.g., psychologists, sociologists, crim- inologists) and amateurs alike, cross all cultures, and for as long as there are notions of law and crime. Intuitive specu- lations are abundant both in writing [14, 11] and folklore.
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Nov 20, 2016 22:44
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I wondered when phrenology was going to make a comeback.
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Nov 20, 2016 22:53
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Ha, no racial discrimination at all, aside from the fact that criminals are usually subject to sociological pipelines that DO discriminate based on race & gender.
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Nov 20, 2016 22:59
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Subjunctive posted:Arxiv stuff is often pre-prints for conferences and journals (which gets around the journals' restrictions on distribution of the material), so it's hard to tell. I don't know one Chinese university from another, either. Except when I've put preprints on the arxiv I would carefully note which conference, which journal, etc.
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Nov 20, 2016 23:09
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Absurd Alhazred posted:Except when I've put preprints on the arxiv I would carefully note which conference, which journal, etc. Yeah, that's true.
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Nov 20, 2016 23:57
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quote:The above data analysis and visualization allow us to make the following interesting and meaningful conclusion, which holds at least for the class of human subjects be- ing examined here, i.e., male Chinese of young or mid- dle age. Although criminals are a small minority in total population, they have appreciably greater variations in fa- cial appearance than general public. This coincides with the fact that all law-biding citizens share many common so- cial attributes, whereas criminals tend to have very different characteristics and circumstances, some of which are quite unique of the individual’s own.
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Nov 21, 2016 00:38
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Arsenic Lupin posted:Side note: the only reason my husband was able to take a year off for his (unsuccessful) startup was that part of his severance package from his previous employer was a year's health insurance. I suspect, without evidence, that Obamacare made it possible for other entrepeneurs to take the risk of going salaryless without also taking the risk of catastrophic health bills, and further without the risk of becoming uninsurable thereafter. There's a pretty high chance that California will replace Obamacare with some California only version if it goes away as we have a democratic supermajority. Assuming the economy hasn't cratered before that.
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Nov 21, 2016 01:06
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nm posted:There's a pretty high chance that California will replace Obamacare with some California only version if it goes away as we have a democratic supermajority. Assuming the economy hasn't cratered before that. Thinking specifically Washington and Oregon - I don't know the makeup of their state legislatures but I do know that Kaiser has a fairly large Northwest branch in addition to their California ones and I can imagine they'd push for it just to expand the risk pools.
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Nov 21, 2016 01:10
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DACK FAYDEN posted:Would it actually be California only? If Trump actually does what he says he's going to, and keep the rules for youth insurance and pre-existing conditions while tossing out the rest, you'll likely see this in every blue state where they can get it passed. The only way insurance companies can function with these two mandates is by expanding the risk pool as much as possible, and even then it's dicey. Poorer states won't be able to afford the subsidies that make it work, so we'll see a vast decrease in quality and access in the middle of the country.
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Nov 21, 2016 01:22
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There is no way that the pre-existing condition rule survives without the mandate. It's completely impossible.
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Nov 21, 2016 01:33
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a foolish pianist posted:There is no way that the pre-existing condition rule survives without the mandate. It's completely impossible. Just the raw rule of "can't be denied for a pre-existing condition" is easy to keep. It just takes a loose definition of what "deny" means. Require every person is offered SOME offer and ignore that the guy with diabetes is charged 40,000 a month and you can still claim no one is "denied" coverage.
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Nov 21, 2016 02:19
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a foolish pianist posted:There is no way that the pre-existing condition rule survives without the mandate. It's completely impossible. Not if you just keep the rule while giving insurance companies another big loophole to gently caress over people. They can balance the books somehow, maybe make it easier to force patients out-of-network or just get rid of out of pocket caps.
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Nov 21, 2016 02:19
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Dr. Fishopolis posted:https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-11-11/peter-thiel-joins-trump-s-presidential-transition-team Help the Hulkster, get hired by a Hulkamaniac.
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Nov 21, 2016 10:49
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The rumor is that the pre-existing condition thing will only apply for a certain period and then it will be back to the glory days of rejecting people for dumb reasons. Supposedly if you say, change jobs under this revised system, you would be fair game to get rejected or pay out the rear end because that ban would not apply unless you stay in your current job
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Nov 21, 2016 15:29
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Arsenic Lupin posted:
They haven't backed a lot of "unicorn" companies that exited big (Jet, and I think Egnyte maybe?). So they're a failure by that metric, but corporate VC is kind of an odd duck because they often have other mandates besides total returns. A lot of times they invest in early stage companies that might be a good acquisition target for their corporate parent down the line, or which synergize with their products in other ways. So they often invest a lot of money for comparably modest exits. Intel Capital is a good example of this -- most years they're among the most active investors in terms of the total money they put into the market, but their portfolio is a bunch of companies you've never heard of.
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Nov 21, 2016 20:49
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Rupert Murdoch sunk, and I do mean sunk, $100M into Theranos . For once, a non-paywalled WSJ article.
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Nov 29, 2016 06:44
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I was really glad to read that. The Theranos movie will be pretty entertaining
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Nov 29, 2016 14:12
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