[ExI] I Miss The King of Extropia

[Dan TheBookMan]

On Jul 22, 2016, at 9:35 AM, William Flynn Wallace <foozler83 at gmail.com> wrote:
> People supplying the money usually can do one of two things: get paid interest or get ownership. I'm not sure why supplying the money seems to you to be of no importance to making something great. Those who supply money are taking a big risk (up to losing all the money they put in) and making a choice that one project is a good bet compared to their other options (in other words, money sunk into one project can't be spent on wild parties;).
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Dan
> 
> The money people are trusting the people who made the company great (or promise to, in the case of venture).  They are not the ones with the ideas and I would not let them veto anything except big parties, and occasionally those too should be held. 

It's their (those risking their money) judgment that a specific project -- and not something else -- might be great. So they're active participants in the process -- not passive ones. Sure, they might not originate all the ideas, but they're making a decision that a particular idea and the people involved will work out. 

Just hatching an idea, too, means very little if you can't bring it to fruition. You can dream up, say, a nice mission to colonize Mars or upload human minds. But if you can't implement it, then it only makes for some nice discussions.

> I do think we should be very thankful to the venture capitalists but often they don't know how to evaluate new ideas.  Just look at the wonderful books that were first turned down by, sometimes, dozens of publishers, before someone who really understood the book bought it.

I'm not and was not arguing about their ability to make accurate forecast, but I was saying why they might, in the case of not being mere lenders* (or giving charity), habe a good reason to want ownership: it's their money, and they can choose other things to spend it on. (And not just wild parties. I was trying to add levity, but they could choose other projects. For instance, if I had saved up or earned millions of my own, I might choose myriads of different things to invest that in, including who knows how many different transhumanist projects.)

And that they might fail is a weak argument. Even in the case of publishing, publishers often fail, but they get it right often enough. But it is their money they're risking. The confident author who disagrees with them has the option of self-publishing and risking her or his own capital. Sometimes they succeed, though I know literally dozens of self-published authors who aren't filling their soup bowl off their self-published books.

Regards,

Dan
  Sample my latest Kindle book, "The Late Mr. Gurlitt," at:
http://mybook.to/Gurlitt

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