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Comment by ulfw | Hacker News Reader

So is this a thing now? That all new high-valuation tech companies of the last generation (Uber, "We") have to have some shady founder/CEO thing going on?

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I doubt the amount of shady CEOs is any worse than it was at times in the past (the 80s being known for the "Gordon Gekko" type CEOs immediately come to mind). I think it just feels like there's more corruption because of a combination of us consuming more media, quicker and recency bias.

+1 Thank you.

The whole Web 2.0 and beyond phenomenon is about getting some other sucker to over-pay for what you built before you run out of money.

And investors are looking for anything to generate returns which leads to blinders.

The only real differences I can see are:

1. The numbers are a magnitude larger, instead of 100's of millions we're talking billions for the individual players.

* Today's villains are far more disingenuous about their motives. In the 80's they unapologetically embraced greed for greed's sake, none of this false "making the world a better place" BS.

We're in an investee's market right now. Investors are throwing large amounts of money at anything that might have a positive return. This gives the founders/CEOs/etc. a lot more power to get away with this kind of stuff. If their behavior scares off one investor, there will still be a line waiting to give them money.

When things swing the other way, and not as much money is floating around waiting to be invested, investors will be able to hold the investees to higher standards.

Being honest doesn’t garner press coverage. Ever hear of troubles at Twilio, PagerDuty, etc? I have not (disclaimer: no investment in either, happy customer of both).

Why would you need to disclaim that you are not an investor?

He’s disclaiming that he’s a costumer, and noting that he’s not an investor.

Transparency and disclosure of any bias is important.

Is it, I think saving disclaimers for when they actually matter is more important. If everyone included disclaimers listing their inconsequential relations to companies they would quickly be ignored as noise(which they would be).

I don't think it's that shady, I'd much prefer founders having power over investors having power. If you've been on HN for a while you've heard way more stories about investors exploiting founders and ruining companies and lives. Both sides should be protected but yeah there exists a bias I'd rather it be on the founder side than the investors.

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