Hacker News Reader

SV mentality.

Dwolla is too good for my 75k? Good for them. Companies like BofA, Walmart, GE, and literally thousands of other companies would love to take that money and put it to use. Only in the upside down world of SV would you have to be somebody to have your investment accepted.

As far as the prediction market, it would be useless with play money. Skin in the game is what drives efficiency.

View on HN

I assume you're talking about buying stock. When you do that, you're not actually giving money to the company unless it's an IPO; you're buying shares from other investors.

When companies raise money, they only raise a given amount. This is true from seed rounds through IPO and subsequent stock issuance. If people want to buy more shares than the company's issuing, some of them won't get shares (and raising the price of equity isn't always the correct answer, especially for an early stage startup).

Bonds...

I'm confused. If this is some sort of Hollywood Stock Exchage where you can magically invest into fake stock of startups, then I'm wrong. What I'm getting at is I too have a shortlist of the next Dropbox(es) who I would love to seed or jump into a Series A with, if I were accredited. But I have no reputation and no celebrity, and thus would be passed over as an early investor.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com