Kriss doesn't touch on the deeper issue of why investors keep giving money to people that openly advertise themselves as con artists.

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jameshart 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

It's a numbers game. You only need one in twenty con artists to become wildly successful before they're caught, and your overall con artist portfolio is guaranteed to win out.

And of course, there's no downside for the investors. If you backed a con artist, you're not culpable - you're a victim.

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shimman 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Have you been paying attention to what has been happening for the last year? Now is the era of con artists: break the law, pay a small vic, and you're free to scam again.

Why wouldn't investors give these people money? It's not like being an investor implies having morales, all they care about is making money whether it's legal or not and luckily for them crime not only pays but it's legal now too.

	▲	kevinsync 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		the dot-con era

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yesco 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Salespeople are the easiest to sell to. Con artists are the easiest to swindle. The people who believe they're immune to being tricked are always the ones who get tricked the most.

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FloorEgg 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Building a successful startup is very hard, and not just in the "it's a lot of hard work" sense, but also in terms of making good decisions. For the average person who went to college and worked in some other industry/capacity, the good decisions are very counterintuitive.

Most VCs have no idea how to accuratly judge startups based on their core merit, or how to make good decision in startups (though they may think they do), so instead they focus on things like "will this founder be able to hype up this startup and sell the next round so I can mark it up on my books".

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marcosdumay 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

So... You think it's because the VCs are conning their investors and those con-man are the best extend and pretend opportunities?

I can believe in that. But just a couple of years ago it was clearly happening because the VCs wanted those people to sell the companies into some mark and return real money to them. I wonder when did the investors became the marks?

	▲	FloorEgg 5 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Mayb in some extreme cases, but I wouldn't go so far as using the "con" word most of the time. The hardest part of startups is probably the making good decisions part. To be a good VC you need to be better at founders at judging startup decisions, AND you need to be good at LP deal flow AND you need to be good at startup deal flow. LP deal flow has to come first (otherwise there is no fund), and because of zirp a lot of VCs got funds up without good startup deal flow or the ability to judge startups well. In other words it's hard to be good a VC too, but for a while it was artificially easy to be a bad VC.
	▲	rpcope1 6 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		I mean whenever things like the Saudi sovereign wealth fund and SoftBank came into existence. They've been the biggest marks to unload your dumbest equity into for as long as I've been paying attention (so at least 10-15 years now), and at least as long as Jim Cramer and his ilk have been hyping dog shit IPOs to drop on clueless retail.

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FeteCommuniste 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Salesmanship all the way down.

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rglover 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Status anxiety.

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john_strinlai 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

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