Insight certainty 4/5 debate potential 3/5

David Friedberg says mega-VCs push startups to risk failure for 100x returns.

David Friedberg · E58: November's CPI, preparing for a downturn, macro outlook, Better.com's botched layoffs & more · Dec 11, 2021 · at 1:05:39

David Friedberg, CEO of The Production Board, analyzes how power-law venture returns align investor incentives against individual startup survival.

0:00 / 0:19exact quote · 19.1s
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“For their portfolio as a whole, they would rather tell everyone, go hard, go fast, spend as much money as you can, and they hope that one out of 10 companies becomes a hundred X from there. And it's okay if nine out of 10 die. So they don't care if you die. They care if one out of 10 companies goes a hundred X.”

quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →

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