Bill Gurley

Not sure if you mean "individuals" compared to companies or organizations, or actually just solo bloggers, so I'll include a few that have more than one individual author but are "personal". https://marginalrevolution.com/ - on economics but so much else https://avc.com/ - Fred has some of the best startup insights https://abovethecrowd.com/ - Gurley doesn't blog much but when he does it's great

Bill talks about issues with traditional IPOs here [0] under _DOOR #1: THE STRUCTURALLY BROKEN IPO PROCESS_. Worth a read. 0: http://abovethecrowd.com/2020/08/23/going-public-circa-2020-door-3-the…

dan wang. he wrote why so few people major in CS. interesting dude. https://danwang.co/ bill gurley, investor http://abovethecrowd.com/

Great article by Bill Gurley that explains some of the factors that drive revenue multiples: http://abovethecrowd.com/2011/05/24/all-revenue-is-not-created-equal-t…

lotsa folks don't think that many unicorns will actually IPO - here's a good read that summarizes the potential issues: http://abovethecrowd.com/2015/02/25/investors-beware/

The Uber article that you referred to as Nate Silver is not actually by him. Its by Ashwath Damodaran (The NYU corp finance prof) http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/uber-isnt-worth-17-billion/ His basic assumption was to use the taxi market as the total addressable market (TAM) Bill Gurley, a VC from Benchmark and one of the investors in Uber, lays out alternative scenarios for TAM including going after car ownership. http://abovethecrowd.com/2014/07/11/how-to-miss-by-a-mile-an-alternati… Damodaran's response to Gurley concedes its probable/plausible/possible for uber to get into non-Taxi and larger markets: http://aswathdamodaran.blogspot.in/2014/07/possible-plausible-and-prob… Bottom line: the optionality of uber going into these larger markets is what is driving these valuations

"In business, I look for economic castles protected by unbreachable moats" - Warren Buffett I completely agree that its in Google's interest to have faster pipes. But I think Google Fiber may just be another moat for Google, another way for them to hinder their perceived threats. This was an excellent write up on Google's strategy to build business moats (from 2011): http://abovethecrowd.com/2011/03/24/freight-train-that-is-android/

Square has strong growth and a proven revenue model and still [just] got a multiple of [16x] --worth putting this in context: 16x is 1.6x of 10x http://abovethecrowd.com/2011/05/24/all-revenue-is-not-created-equal-t… Square is also facing: -- Massive entrenched competition, that is highly profitable; -- A politically shielded oligopoly with global political reach Unlike FB, twitter, etc which are genuinely new ideas to which that have had unique first mover advantages.

Android, as well as Chrome and Chrome OS for that matter, are not “products” in the classic business sense. They have no plan to become their own “economic castles.” Rather they are very expensive and very aggressive “moats,” funded by the height and magnitude of Google’s castle. http://abovethecrowd.com/2011/03/24/freight-train-that-is-android/ (Personally I think Android will be more than just a moat for Google. But it will never generate Apple-level profits, and that is just fine for Google.)

I am blaming Silicon Valley for building a hype machine that valued appearance over substance, short-term paper gains over long-term value creation. Again. And I'm hardly the only one saying this. Bill Gurley, a partner at Benchmark, made it clear that we've been dealing with a bubble, and said that the best possible thing that could happen was "a return to an appreciation for sound business execution". [1] Nobody minds minds that we have companies that fail. That's the game. But when we create companies that burn ten million, a hundred million, maybe a billion dollars and never could have succeeded, then that is a major fuckup that is on us. Even if you don't care about wasting OPM at that scale, just think of the number of seed and A-round companies that Theranos's $686.3M could have funded. If our job is to make interesting mistakes, we should be maximizing the amount learned per venture dollar. [1] http://abovethecrowd.com/2016/04/21/on-the-road-to-recap/

You state your answer with great confidence, but I think you are wrong. In the US (where Netflix is based), the "first sale doctrine" has been held to allow the rental of any legally purchased DVD (even those purchased at Walmart): Because of the first-sale doctrine, any DVD reseller, including Netflix, can basically buy a DVD at WalMart, and turn around and rent it to someone else the very same day. The content owners have absolutely no control over whether the copy can be resold or rented. Period. As such, Netflix has the ability to rent (via DVD) any movie which has ever been sold on DVD, and its costs are relatively fixed as a result of the retail price of the actual DVD. http://abovethecrowd.com/2011/09/18/understanding-why-netflix-changed-… In your defense, it appears that many lawyers also do not understand this law. Here for example we see three saying that rental of consumer DVD's is clearly illegal, and two saying that it's just fine: http://www.avvo.com/legal-answers/is-it-legal-to-rent-out-dvd-s-i-ve-p… This is probably because various studios have attempted to convince the public that rental of consumer DVD's is not allowed, even though falsely marking DVD's in this way is probably not legal: http://williampatry.blogspot.com/2007/05/first-sale-fandango.html But while I'm pretty certain you are wrong, and although I think I understand the law here, I am not a lawyer, much less a specialist in copyright…

Bill Gurley of Benchmark Capital foresaw Android's rise, and wrote an excellent essay about it in early 2011, "The Freight Train That Is Android."[1] His main point: Google is not trying to make a profit on Android; they're trying only to control the key layers between themselves and the consumer, by making these layers free or even less than free, which is a HUGE problem for Android's competitors, who must make a profit. As he put it, "I don’t know if a large organized industry has ever faced this fierce a form of competition – someone who is not trying to 'win' in the classic sense. They want market share, but they don’t need economics. Imagine if Ford were faced with GM paying people to take Chevrolets? How many would they be able to sell? What if you received $0.10 for every free Pepsi you consumed? Would you still pay $1.50 for a Coke?" I highly recommend you read (or re-read) Bill's prescient essay. -- [1] http://abovethecrowd.com/2011/03/24/freight-train-that-is-android/

The Information story in the first reply might be a better link.[1] Either way, this is like sending up the Bezos Signal.[2] [1]: https://www.theinformation.com/articles/amazon-starts-charging-for-som… [2]: https://abovethecrowd.com/2015/01/30/ubers-new-bhag-uberpool/

Here are the resources I found most helpful: - On Presentations by Siqi Chen (https://www.beautiful.ai/player/-LiSV45O9K1sE8uv5oMj/On-Presentations) - In Defense of the Deck (https://abovethecrowd.com/2015/07/07/in-defense-of-the-deck/)

Thompson quoted it from http://abovethecrowd.com/2011/03/24/freight-train-that-is-android/

It's not really HIPPA. I think it's more things like a lack of price transparency, the 'customers' of health care being disconnected from the users of health care and so on. Kind of like how B2B software is often horrible because the customers are disconnected execs and the users (employees) pay the price. This goes into more detail: http://abovethecrowd.com/2017/12/18/customer-first-healthcare/

Gurley's post [1] (from 2014) gives one possible end goal: "Learning about Yu’e Bao gave us an epiphany that Jack Ma likely had years ago. If you want to truly disrupt the financial services industry, perhaps you need to stop attacking the transactional experience and launch a competitive product on the asset gathering side. Once you have the assets, all the disruptive things that Silicon Valley types want to do will be easy. The hardest part has been getting access to the funds." [1]: http://abovethecrowd.com/2014/06/18/disrupting-finance-from-above-weal…

Sam HAS to play down the fact that we are in a tech bubble. He is, after all, a venture capitalist, so do note the conflict of interest here. My friend referred me to this Bill Gurley article [1]. My metric for whether there is another bubble is not so sophisticated. I feel that there is a bubble when celebrities (like sports personalities) begin investing in questionable startups [2][3]. Harkens back to the '99 bubble. Edit: Before you bring up Ashton Kutcher, a single data point does not a trend make. But yes, we've been in a bubble long before he began investing actually. [1]: http://abovethecrowd.com/2014/01/24/on-bubbles/ [2]: http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2016/04/kobe-bryant-silicon-valley-tech… [3]: https://e27.co/boxing-champion-manny-pacquiao-throws-his-hat-into-the-…

I couldn't find a link in this article to Gurley's article, but apparently, this is it: http://abovethecrowd.com/2016/04/21/on-the-road-to-recap/ (HN discussion, a month ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11539791) And today, we read that Uber got a $3.5 billion investment from Saudi Arabia’s investment fund: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11817959

You aren't taking into account multiple liquidation preferences, ratchets, and profit guarantees on a downround IPO that are in the term sheets for this round. Warning of such "dirty term sheets" is Benchmark's Bill Gurley. http://abovethecrowd.com/2016/04/21/on-the-road-to-recap/ http://abovethecrowd.com/2016/04/21/on-the-road-to-recap/

Unfortunate that Theranos didn't live up to expectations. Bill Gurley writes that the expose on Theranos may have been the seminal moment causing reality to kick in for this tech cycle: http://abovethecrowd.com/2016/04/21/on-the-road-to-recap/ So in a way, it can be seen as a good and necessary thing that expectations are brought back to match reality.

The rebuttal: http://abovethecrowd.com/2014/07/11/how-to-miss-by-a-mile-an-alternati…

Not sure what you mean. Prices would be set in order for supply and demand to even out. The startup is unlikely to use undocumented supply because of risk. Don't understand the second point either. 20% margins is plenty. See: http://abovethecrowd.com/2013/04/18/a-rake-too-far-optimal-platformpri… And tech-driven businesses have lower marginal costs thus can succeed with lower gross margins.

The comment about the social network for pet owners made me think of this, which actually turns out to be quite a good idea I think: http://abovethecrowd.com/2012/11/13/our-most-recent-marketplace-invest… "DogVacay is an online marketplace that links dog owners with passionate dog care providers who open up their own home as an alternative to the traditional cage-oriented kennel."

http://abovethecrowd.com/2011/05/24/all-revenue-is-not-created-equal-t… see: (1) network effects (2) organic demand

One theory, discussed by Bill Gurley in the post below, is that it'll put them in a better negotiating position with the studios, who were trying to get a percentage of Netflix revenues (not just the streaming revenue)... http://abovethecrowd.com/2011/09/18/understanding-why-netflix-changed-…

A reference to http://abovethecrowd.com/2011/03/24/freight-train-that-is-android/

Here is the "scorched earth" post: http://abovethecrowd.com/2011/03/24/freight-train-that-is-android/ I agree with it regarding Android & Chrome OS, but I'm not sure that it applies to web apps like G+, gmail since those have per user costs.

Most people (IMO correctly) assume that the point of Android is to make Google the default search on mobile phones. As more and more people use mobile devices to search, and search is after all Google's core business, it has an enormous interest in tapping into the mobile search market. And I'm guessing many users will choose to use the default search provider the phone uses. So the theoretical threat is that Amazon/Apple will negotiate a deal with Microsoft to use Bing as the default search on their phones, thus losing Google a lot of customers. More about their Android strategy here: http://abovethecrowd.com/2011/03/24/freight-train-that-is-android/.