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Chamath Palihapitiya on rebuilding Social Capital & Silicon Valley ponzi scheme

This Week in Startups · 160K views · 2018-10-13 · 45:39

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Overview

Chamath Palihapitiya talks with Jason Calacanis about how he bought into the mythology of Silicon Valley, which he calls a Ponzi scheme, and about rebuilding Social Capital. He urges founders to grow slowly and build what matters.

On Hacker News

HN cites it for Chamath's claim that venture-backed growth resembles a Ponzi scheme, especially when startups spend heavily on big-tech advertising.

Recommended by 1 HN people across 1 months · HN mentions 2018–2022

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What people said

wczekalski · 2019-11 · Recommendation

I really liked this video featuring Chamath Palihapitiya[1]. It's essentially a rant about most of VC being a ponzi scheme: [VIDEO] [1] (from Wikipedia) Chamath Palihapitiya an is a venture capitalist and the founder and CEO of Social Capital. Palihapitiya was an early senior executive at Facebook, joining the company in 2007 and leaving in 2011. He is a minority stakeholder and board member of the Golden State Warriors.

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nowherebeen · 2022-04 · Reference

Not really. Just because they exit at a later stage doesn't mean its not a ponzi scheme. Chamath Palihapitiya certainly disagrees with you ( [VIDEO] ). Skyhigh valuations with no product market fit and no path to revenue certainly sounds like one to me. Many startups burn money to acquire customers, but churn is high because they don't have PM fit. It becomes an endless cycle of raising to acquire more customers. Once the money stops, someone will eventually be holding the bag.

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1290cc · 2019-12 · Reference

Chamath Palihapitiya talked about this problem in an interview from 2018. Many tech startups spend 0.40c of every VC dollar with FB/Google/Amazon. Here is the original interview: [VIDEO]

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Video by This Week in Startups, played through YouTube.

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