Because trading on it to extract other people’s money as part of fraudulent schemes will destroy your reputation.
The only reason to do it is if you feel your reputation is unearned and worthless and this is the best thing you can do with it.
There are definitely other ways to make a living.
That's the only business investment firms have ever been in. To believe otherwise is naïveté.
A reputation for making money unfairly, and at the expense of others is, and has always been, extremely relevant to your ability to convince other people to do business with you.
Seriously. As someone that grew up in the 80s and watched how Milton Friedman's id was unleashed, and continues to run rampant today, there's little evidence to support your thesis.
But these guys have really traded far beyond their actual raw financial power due to reputation.
Within this context, totally agree. It's where a16z has failed: its returns are subpar. The other failures flow from that.
[Edit]: Can't reply that deep in the thread, but thanks for the insight!
a16z started lagging in 2016 [1]. That led to the crypto fund in 2018 [2] and registering as an investment adviser in 2019 [3]. The '18 crypto fund did well [4], so they quadrupled down on the crack pipe and returned to form [5].
[1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/andreessen-horowitzs-returns-tr...
[2] https://techcrunch.com/2018/06/25/andreessen-horowitz-has-a-...
[3] https://www.thestreet.com/investing/cryptocurrency/andreesen...
[4] https://www.theinformation.com/briefings/a16zs-first-crypto-...
[4] https://www.wsj.com/articles/andreessen-horowitz-went-all-in...
No, this Gordon Gecko philosophy is why the 2010s were a cultural wasteland.