Criticizing Juicero is fine. What's intellectually dishonest is criticizing SV by claiming Juicero is typical of it.http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/05/11/silicon-valley-a-reality-check/ …
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Fair enough. But we also need to own that the B.S. vs hard facts ratio here is often too high. Theranos didn't help
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It's high, but it's hard to say for sure if it's too high.
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Founders' ambitions and crazy-ideas-that-aren't are hard to distinguish from BS. So some amount of credulity is optimal.
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Consider the effects of overconfidence. On average, any given founder still loses, those with a portfolio of overconfident founders win
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I know VCs tend favor kill-or-cure strategies, and often warn founders about it.
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The reason is more sinister than just the portfolio effect though. There's also the opportunity cost of the board seat.
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The phenomenon is not as bad as it used to be though. And founders benefit from portfolio effect too, because they can start multiple cos.
End of conversation
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I have a life-long love affair with Silicon Valley--a remarkable engine of innovation & good--but I still think Juicero is idiotic.
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Maybe. But there are idiotic things in every industry. So to attack SV for it says more about the writer than about SV.
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Yes, there are. And it's the media's job to point out what they are (as well as highlight the good.)
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No, it's the media's job to write about man bites dog, not dog bites man.
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The media should report on the number of dog bites per year, and so on. It should describe reality.
End of conversation
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I'm a Silicon Valley fan, but the biggest cost of any misallocation of capital in Silicon Valley is the opportunity cost--a better future.
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We rely on innovation for better living standards, economic growth, and an economy/society that's not zero-sum. Big responsibility for SV.
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If living standards had improved only half as much between 1900 and now, as they actually did, that would be a huge loss.
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So the fact that Silicon Valley does a lot of good work doesn't make it immune from criticism--we're all counting on it for so much.
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No one thinks SV should be immune from criticism. My point is that this particular criticism is bogus.
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This particular criticism = treating this startup as representative.
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That's definitely a good point. People sometimes have a tendency to treat extreme examples as more typical than they are.
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The average startup doesn't get covered because it's average. The news covers the atypical, which by repetition becomes viewed as typical.
End of conversation
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