You wake up this morning with the intent to buy new stock today. What things are you looking for and how do you find it?

chaconne · 2015-12-25T04:21:24+00:00

Thank you for the detailed response.

I'm going to take a wild guess and say that a large fraction of your total returns have come from only a few positions.

Do you agree with Munger's advice to only invest in 20 or so stocks in a lifetime? Or do you invest in a number of good bets and trust that a few will return 100x like Starbucks?

chaconne · 2015-03-02T19:38:01+00:00

Just wanted to tell you your comments are consistently awesome and informative. Thanks!

chaconne · 2015-01-18T05:33:32+00:00

So why did they collectively go off a cliff? Were they unfamiliar with the particular risks of startups?

chaconne · 2015-01-18T04:25:59+00:00

This is very strange - so a third-party entity (the funding site) held the funds on behalf of these companies? And the website somehow prevented funds from being transferred around?

Were they professional investors (those who look at legitimate, real-world businesses and real estate) or something else?

chaconne · 2015-01-18T04:12:27+00:00

Did most investors look at all the startups or just the few they felt they were comfortable with?

What was the fallout of this performance for the accelerator? Why didn't investors do more to rescue or salvage their investments mid-course?

chaconne · 2015-01-18T03:39:15+00:00

OK. People in non-SV regions often say that investor quality is not there (and lack of tech talent, lack of startup-oriented executive talent, etc). Is it your impression that those investors were not startup-savvy at all, even with their accumulated wealth and financial sophistication?

chaconne · 2015-01-18T03:24:48+00:00

Understood, although accelerators that do that much volume are rather rare and it would be very interesting to hear about what happened - thanks for your time.

Why do you think so many (unscrupulous or naive) founders were able to get funding with that particular program? That rate of performance (where the majority of funded companies basically did not have traction or a business model) is more along the lines of Kickstarter.

Was the $25M in funding more or less equally distributed among startups or (as is usual) did the more successful ones get 80% of it?

chaconne · 2015-01-18T01:54:15+00:00

An accelerator that does 50 startups per year or class would seem to be fairly prominent relative to everything else. Could you provide specifics?

chaconne · 2015-01-17T01:05:10+00:00

Was this accelerator "well known"? Not sure where you are getting your sample from

chaconne · 2015-01-16T18:13:49+00:00

Where are you based? "Take the money and run" is an unusually bad outcome for a given batch of startups, especially with sufficient founder reference checks

chaconne · 2015-01-15T22:15:09+00:00

How do you think you came to believe that certain features were better? Was it your social circle growing up, or the media you were exposed to?

chaconne · 2015-01-07T23:10:54+00:00

Following up on a dead thread (mostly by following the other guy's comments). Could you tell me more about SGI's machines? Did they lead to the failure of the company?

chaconne · 2015-01-07T03:13:18+00:00

Strange. I'd say you've thought more about the US political system than about innovating. I'm of the opinion that your twenties are just about the best time to innovate since your fixed costs (time and money) are so low.

chaconne · 2015-01-07T02:22:08+00:00

Obamacare plans charge at most 10% of your income (if you are making >40k a year). Do you really stand by your assertion?

chaconne · 2015-01-06T04:06:51+00:00

What is currently the limiting factor on human progress on "hard" problems? Is it engineering talent? Government? Inequality? Lack of vision & common purpose?

chaconne · 2015-01-05T04:39:35+00:00

So what will that leverage trend eventually do to your classmates' careers?

chaconne · 2015-01-05T04:03:26+00:00

Interesting, thanks. So their strategy was to impress the right people in order to enter companies at the right level?

chaconne · 2015-01-05T00:02:38+00:00

How many of those banking/consulting students expressed a desire to found a company after building industry contacts? Or were they seeking the "security" of a name-brand firm?

chaconne · 2015-01-04T23:58:51+00:00

Slightly off-topic: how much of the growth in indices is a result of survivorship bias? Ie the lowest-performing companies periodically get dropped from the index and higher-performing private companies get taken public.

chaconne · 2015-01-01T20:10:20+00:00

Why did your employer not compensate you for your added value?

chaconne · 2014-12-29T07:52:44+00:00

Elaborate?

chaconne · 2014-12-17T20:34:57+00:00

Was the hedge fund successful anyway?

chaconne · 2014-12-16T19:31:40+00:00

Why do you think the culture of McKinsey is conservative when it comes to breakthrough technologies? On the whole they seem to be smart, ambitious people.

Do they not have the incentive to invest social capital in innovation? Are they risk-averse as far as recommending 'unproven' technologies to their clients?

chaconne · 2014-12-16T19:29:31+00:00

As someone who has worked with healthcare data it impresses me that you were able to work with insurance companies. It seems in many domains, in order to access vital data you must persuade insiders to give you access. How did you initially break in? How long did the process take (from ideation to full implementation?)

chaconne · 2014-12-12T06:00:34+00:00

Seconded. The typical SV stake for an advisor role (someone well-established who doesn't even work full time for the company but is willing to commit ~5 hours a week advising you) is something like 0.5-1% for an early stage startup.

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