Does Elon Musk + Peter Thiel = 3 or 1.5

I've written previously (here and here) about the issues with private companies merging in an acquihire or other downside scenario (i.e. one company running out of cash and another with cash but searching for a business model).  Often times those involve trading within a venture capital portfolio or between two venture firms portfolios.

But what about the case where both companies are well capitalized and doing well?  I think we will see more of these in 2016 and beyond as IPOs are still far and few between and unicorns struggle to justify their stratospheric valuations.

One of the first I was exposed to was the merger between Peter Thiel's Confinity/PayPal and Elon Musk's X.com.  Both companies were relatively well capitalized, building peer to peer payments businesses and spending a significant amount of their funding on customer acquisition.  According to David Sacks (PayPal's COO at the time), both companies were involved in a scorched Earth battle to acquire customers (upping referral bonuses to $20) that neither were likely to survive if they continued down that road and the merger solved this problem (although created others).

Obviously, Musk and Thiel both did fine off the eventual Paypal IPO (and even better subsequently with Facebook and Tesla).  Musk was the early winner taking the CEO role (for a brief period) in the merged company and the largest equity stake as well.  Not surprisingly, the merger was highly dilutive, particularly to Confinity/PayPal shareholders.  I was a Limited Partner in Angel Investors II (Ron Conway's angel fund) that was an investor in Confinity.  At the IPO, Musk held a 14.2% stake vs Thiel's 5.6% (Sequoia Capital had 10.7%).

For the LP's in Angel Investors II, the investment ended up returning around 7x (but only 1% of the fund), which was a very good return but not as high as it could've been, and clearly not enough to make a dent in many of the other 150+ companies (most that went out of business) in a portfolio that included candybarrel.com, eRugGallery, and dunk.net.  Luckily, Google was one of the 150 and did ultimately return the fund assuming the LP was smart enough to hold the stock after distribution.

I originally got to thinking about this when I received a 485 page information statement on a previously announced merger between Clean Power Finance and Kilowatt Financial.  I was a seed investor in Clean Power Finance (CPF), which subsequently raised $90M+ in venture funding and  over $1 billion in project and debt financing.  CPF's major venture backer is Kleiner Perkins, who coincidentally, is also the majority equity holder in Kilowatt.  Like CPF, Kilowatt also provides solar financing services to consumers.  It is obviously too early to know whether this will be a successful merger, but I generally prefer to roll the dice with the original horse I bet on.  You also have to wonder about the numerous conflicts of interests involved in a deal where one investor owns a significant stake in both parties.

Another seed investment where something similar happened was the 2010 iControl Networks merger with uControl (yeah not a lot of creativity in naming...).  Kleiner was also the lead venture investor in iControl, which had raised close to $50M in financing at the time (I previously wrote a post about iControl's financing history).  Both companies offered home security and automation services through partners.  iControl had make significant inroads in the security industry (partnering with ADT to deliver ADT Pulse) while uControl had more success with cable and broadband providers.  As an investor, I wasn't very excited at the time due to the dilution and challenges in integrating the two platforms.  Looking back five years later, it appears that the merger was a very expensive partner acquisition strategy for iControl.  By the way, this month is the 10-year anniversary of iControl's Series A financing and I haven't been able to get liquid on a single share.  Hope that changes in 2016...

What does this mean for entrepreneurs and investors?  Here are a few thoughts:

• Expect more consolidation - While acquisitions of early stage companies often provide benefits to fill in product line, acquire a team, or enter a new market, later stage acquisitions are often a sign that one or both companies got stuck in the red zone and the hope that the combined effort can get the ball across the goal line.  

• Many acquisition are a Zero Sum Game (or worse) - This holds true for many public company acquisitions as well.  Press Releases always tout the synergistic benefits of the combination, but in reality, rarely are both entities better off.  Typically one comes out better and often both end up in a worse position.

• Resetting of Liquidity Clock - Similar to raising a large late stage private round, this also increases the combined enterprise value and limits potential exits to either an IPO or very large acquisition.  It takes time for the business to catch up to these market expectations and valuation.  Most never make it there.  I do wonder if we will being to see the rarely used redemption clauses triggered where early investors may be happy to take their money back plus accrued preferential return to close out a fund.

Back to that PayPal merger.  What would've actually happened if Confinity and X.com had continued to battle it out.  One thing I know is that the combined business turned out a lot better than Peter Thiel's original business plan for infrared beaming of electronic payments over Palm Pilots that I unfortunately passed on investing in 1999.  For those interested in an entertaining look back at Silicon Valley history, you can find that business plan here.

Do Angel Groups Belong in Heaven or Hell?

"You analyze me, pretend to despise me, 

You laugh when I stumble and fall. 

There may come a day I will dance on your grave"

     — Hell in a Bucket, Grateful Dead

I attended one of the Grateful Dead "Fare Thee Well" shows in Santa Clara last weekend.  I have always admired the Dead's biz model (sorry Friendster/MySpace/Facebook, The Dead was the First Social Network) and music, although I never became a full fledged Deadhead.  In fact, before this show, the last time I saw them in concert was in 1978! The band closed out the first set with a rousing rendition of "Hell in a Bucket" with Phish guitarist Trey Anastasio energizing the crowd with his licks (pic below).

During the set break (perhaps influenced by the large amount of second half smoke consumed), I thought about angel groups in relation to the lyrics above, particularly the "you analyze me, pretend to despise me" line.

In theory, angel groups are great.  From an investors position, you have a number of individuals with a wealth of experience to source, vet, and co-invest in deals.  From an entrepreneurs standpoint, you can get a much larger investment than with individual angels, have potential follow-on support and leverage skills and network of a large investor base.

In practice, it can be much different.  For entrepreneurs, the process tends to be very long with many different players, information requests, and a lack of transparency with the process.  This is the exact opposite of the preferred angel funding round where investors can make a decision over a cup of coffee and a quick "no" is much preferred to a drawn out process.  I often jokingly compare the process of going through an angel group as falling somewhere between a colonoscopy and waterboarding.

A typical angel group process goes something like this:

1. Entrepreneur submits application to angel group on gust, proseeder, or similar platform.  To do a thorough job, the application can take anywhere from 2-5 hours to complete.  While there is good reason for angel groups to have a platform to share information, discuss opportunities, and track investments, it doesn't do much for the entrepreneur who could simply provide a link to their AngelList profile.
2. Initial Screen - groups typically have a process to filter applications and may go through an industry group, be done online, or via a conference call or meeting.  The goal is to decide which companies to invite to pitch a subgroup.  It typically can take up to 30 days to get to the initial screen.
3. Screening Meeting - the entrepreneur is invited to pitch to a screening committee.  The company may have 10-20 minutes to pitch and answer questions, often from investors that haven't reviewed the application materials and/or know very little about the space the entrepreneur is operating.  The entrepreneur typically doesn't know who is going to be at the meeting or in many cases who is at the meeting.  This might take anywhere from 15 days - 45 days from the initial screen to get to the screening meeting.
4. Dinner Meeting - the full membership (or as many as can make it) typically meet in the evening either bi-weekly, monthly or quarterly.  Here the entrepreneur hopefully has a deal lead and champion in the group who introduces and leads a discussion after 20-30 minutes of the pitch and Q&A.  Many deals get derailed here as members may bring up questions/concerns with the deal champion that aren't answered properly.  Often, these questions are about competitors or something someone read on techcrunch yesterday.  The dinner meeting may be another 15-45 days after the screening meeting.
5. Due Diligence - after the dinner meeting, members indicate if they are potentially interested in investing in the deal and/or participating in due diligence.  The diligence period can take anywhere from 2 weeks to several months.  During this time, the entrepreneur may have no idea where she stands or how much investment interest is within the group.

Based on the above, the process can take anywhere from 45 days to 6 months and suck up a lot of time and resources of the entrepreneur while exposing confidential information among a broad group.  Contrast this process to sharing an AngelList profile or meeting individually with a handful of angels and you can see why many entrepreneurs cross this funding path off of their list.  

I joined Sand Hill Angels (SHA) in 2005 and at the time we had 10-15 members vs. close to 100 today.  Decisions could be made faster and investment amounts per deal (counterintuitively) were actually higher.  I took a leave of absence at the beginning of 2012 primarily due to the fact that I felt we weren't serving our primary customer group, the entrepreneurs.  I decided to rejoin at the beginning of this year as I missed hanging out with many of the members as well as the opportunity to be the lead investor in financings, which was something I couldn't do on my own.  I was hoping the process would have improved in the interim 3 years, but discovered it hadn't.

Granted, there were ways to get around the process and I managed to lead two financings this year that were completed in two weeks.  One was a follow-on investment and the other was an opportunity that was closing quickly and I shared with the members, set up a single meeting, and was able to get commitments and fund quickly.  However, these financings are the exception to the rule in SHA and I assume more so in other groups.

By the way, SHA is one of the better angel groups (#14 out of 370 angel groups and #2 in value of network by CB Insights).  Many are filled with service providers looking for consulting work and entrepreneurs only figure this out after they pitch.  Others have the audacity to charge entrepreneurs to pitch to the group!  At SHA, every member is an investor and those that don't invest, are asked to leave the group.  It is also forbidden to solicit work or do side deals with the startups.

So, how can this be fixed?  I've got a few ideas:

• Kill the screening call and screening meeting.  These provide little value to members and entrepreneurs.
• Increase the number of general meetings to accelerate investments in companies that are ready
• Only bring companies to the general meeting that have at least a minimum amount of investment committed
• Increase minimum investment amount per member/per deal.  At SHA (since investments are done through an entity) individual investments can be quite small.
• Have groups of 2-6 members work together on sourcing and working on diligence.  These would be angel groups with the angel group and would ideally commit to particular deals and bring to the group

I've got plenty more, but this is a good start.  From my vantage point, most angel groups have a pipeline full of mediocre opportunities.  The best ones don't see any benefit in going to the group and the worst get screened out quickly.  There is currently a void in committed lead investors (Hello Party Round) for pre-seed and seed deals and a big opportunity for angel groups to fill this void if they can move quickly.

A parting thought.  It's hard enough to raise money for your startup without having people who don't understand your business pick it apart like a vulture on a carcass. I'd much rather roll the dice with the entrepreneur and laugh all the way to the bank than have a bunch of founders dancing on my grave.

Please Don't Celebrate Failure!

Silicon Valley and the venture capital industry were built on taking risks and making big bets on technology, teams, and markets.  It's great that failure does not need to be worn as a scarlet letter as it does in other cultures or Hollywood...(wonder if a pic of Emma Stone will get a few new visitors to the ProfessorVC blog).

I remember back in the day when VC's took risks and would invest in nascent technologies and markets.  Now firms are more interested in piling on a late stage financing for an Uber or Slack after product/market has been de-risked and the only question is whether the sky high valuation will ultimately supported by the financial markets.

For a number of years (or at least since twitter has been around), the Silicon Valley echo chamber has publicly celebrated modest exits or acqui-hires.  However, now, it seems that the pendulum has swung so far the other way that failure is being celebrated.  Every week there is another post about "how we failed".   Medium seems to be the platform of choice to promote your failures.

Here are a few:

• Well We Failed, 
• Postmortem of a Venture-Backed Startup and 
• My Startup Failed

I recently had a fireside chat with Dave McClure at SJSU where I questioned Dave about a blog post he wrote on failure, late bloomer, not a loser (I hope). You can skip ahead to the 37:35 mark where Dave lets out the secret that writing about being a loser will get you a huge audience for your blog.



SVCE Speaker Series: Dave McClure from SJSU CoB on Vimeo.

Perhaps, those entrepreneurs are just looking to make a few bucks with google AdSense and Commission Junction while figuring out next career move...

I agree it is good to share lessons learned with other entrepreneurs.  Also, if it is cathartic for you to do a post-mortem for the world to see, I'm not going to stand in your way.  However, where I draw the line is when failures are treated as less than a little speed bump on the road to success.  FAILING SUCKS!! YOU ARE IN THE GAME TO WIN!! EMPLOYEES LOST THEIR JOBS AND INVESTORS LOST MONEY!!

Ok, now it's time to reveal what got ProfessorVC's tighty whities in a bunch.  I received this email from a CEO/founder of a company where I was an investor on April 14th at 8:29 PM:

Thank you for your belief in me and the entire team. We had bold visions for how we were going to upend research and investment in the private market, and we wanted to make that vision a reality. Unfortunately, like many startups, we’ve run out of runway to execute. As of April 15, company will be effectively out of cash.

Yeah, you read that right!  Oops. we're running out of cash tomorrow!! Oh well, we failed...This was with no advanced warning and only bullish statements on company's progress.  It's one thing to be an optimistic entrepreneur but another to be delusional and reckless!  Apparently the entrepreneur (can't tell you who it is but his name rhymes with Saul Pingh) was too embarrassed or arrogant to respond to my requests for answers and more info.  Another investor had to threaten to have his lawyer make the next request before getting a call.  It turns out there was ultimately an acquihire and investors may potentially receive a very small fraction of our investment back.

As an investor, I expect to lose money on many of my investments.  That's part of being an angel investor and luckily the returns on the winners far exceeds the losses on the losers.  However, if entrepreneurs are going to build their companies on other people's money, they need to communicate and work like hell to win!  Sorry, contrary to popular belief among the millennials, there is no trophy for losing (actually, a quick google search shows there is one).

Please don't win one of these!

PostScript: The identity of Saul Pingh was discovered by a DC reporter Chris Bing following in the footsteps of those other DC investigative reporters Woodward and Bernstein...Chris attended the celebration of the acquisition (pic below)

On April 16, the acquisition deal for Disruption Corp. by 1776 was announced. Those pictured include 1776 co-founder Evan Burfield (far left); Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe (center, behind podium); 1776 co-founder Donna Harris (to right of McAuliffe); and Disruption Corp. founder Paul Singh (far right). DC Inno photo.

It might not be a bubble but sure as hell the rent is too damn high!

The above was the opening salvo of a controversial tweetstorm yesterday by my former student and 500 Startups founding partner, Dave McClure (full venom below).

I've known Dave for 20 years and one of my favorite parts about him is that he will always tell you what he thinks and make sure you don't miss anything through creative use of profanity and CAPS.  This tweetstorm really hits home (particularly #4 about founders getting paydays while angel investors lose money), although Dave says it better:

What is also fucked is with small exits $1-$10M, founders may get $1M paydays but angel investors at $5-$10M caps will lose money  

I invested in my first AngelList syndicate about 9 months ago in the authentication startup, Authy.  I started using Authy for two-factor authentication to provide greater security in my digital currency trading.  It was a great product addressing a large market opportunity and was interested in seeing how the AngelList syndicate process worked.  Suffice it to say when I saw the announcement that Authy was being acquired by Twilio less than a year after making the investment, I was initially excited.  As with all M&A exits, there was a round of congratulatory messages to the founder in the Silicon Valley echo chamber.

However, when I read the announcement and saw that the acquisition price wasn't disclosed, alarm bells started going off in my head.  This is often a sign of an acquihire or very small exit.  Also, a private company buying another private company is not a scenario I typically like, although Twilio certainly has excellent prospects and may go public this year, providing liquidity in the medium term. I already own stock in Twilio indirectly through a limited partnership interest in a venture fund and don't need to bet more on Twilio.  I don't know the reasons for selling, but presumably Authy felt their prospects weren't promising as a standalone entity and may have had difficulty raising further financing.  Due to confidentiality provisions, I can't disclose details, but there are many very unhappy participants who invested through the syndicate.

As a refresher, syndicates were introduced by Angellist a couple of years ago as a way for companies to raise funds in small increments from a large number of investors (SEC limit of 99 accredited investors).  Subsequently, they also introduced a platform for individual angel investors and funds to syndicate a piece of their investment in exchange for a carry on the syndicated portion.  Syndicates can either be company led or investor led.  In the case of Authy, it was company led, so the only fees and carry were to AngelList.  Conceptually, the syndication process provides a way for companies to effectively conduct crowdfunding and angels to act as VCs.

While I find the theory of syndicates appealing, particularly for individuals that wouldn't have access to deal flow on their own, I'm generally not interested in paying additional fees and carry when I can invest directly on my own.  If I'm going to pay a fee and carry, would prefer to invest in a venture capital fund, as the investments are being managed by professionals and have a duty to look out for LP interests.

However, I did want to check out the process to see if I might want to create my own syndicate.  It was indeed very easy to review the investment opportunity and fund through a complete online process.  Rather than owning a direct stake in Authy, I became a member of a single purpose LLC created by AngelList to invest in the offering.  The entity invested in the same capped convertible note as other investors.  AngelList's policy is to have the entity vote along with the majority of investors in the company (not the syndicate) when a shareholder (or in this case, debt holder) vote is required.

Once the specifics of the transaction were posted to the members of the AngelList syndicate, there was a heated discussion regarding how the transaction was valued in relation to the valuation cap.  The board decided not to use an external valuation of Twilio's common stock that had been done the month prior to the acquisition, but instead come up with their own valuation methodology.  Of course, this was favorable to holders of common stock (the founder being the largest shareholder) and in addition, the founder received additional benefits in the transaction, presumably at the expense of the debt holders.

Interesting thing about all of this is that one of the primary reasons Naval Ravikant started AngelList was to improve transparency in the investment process (along with access to deal flow).  Transparency became a huge issue for Naval after he felt he was screwed by VC investors prior to his startup (DealTime) being acquired by Epinions. In fact, he took the extra step and filed litigation against two Sand Hill Road firms, something that is rarely done  When syndicates were announced in 2013, I had a twitter exchange with Naval regarding the transparency issue in regards to the syndicate lead's investment.

Given the above, it is interesting that AngelList has been trying to avoid full transparency on the transaction.  I have heard from many investors who think they got a raw deal.  A number of the posts relate to how the Authy board determined the fair market value of the deal consideration, particularly in light of the board being controlled by the founder.  One of the investors in the syndicate says some of his critical posts have been deleted and he has been bullied by someone on the AngelList team.  While it may not be practical from a process or legal standpoint to have the individuals in the syndicate vote on corporate matters, they should be treated with complete transparency on the transactions rather than trying to decipher the hocus pocus on a  deal.

My intention of the post isn't to bash AngelList.  I have been a big fan of AngelList from day one and am definitely entrepreneur friendly.  In fact, I have been on the platform since it's early days as a daily email sharing interesting angel opportunities.  It has definitely grown up and become a major force in the entrepreneurial ecosystem.  However, I will think long and hard before joining another syndicate.

At the end of the twitterstorm is a response from YCombinator's Sam Altman:

.@davemcclure just worry about trying to make 10,000x sometimes, and let founders who work really hard for years w/small exit keep the money

I understand where Sam Altman is coming from in his response and it's fine for him to look at the big picture and accept that for his own investments, but isn't right to expect other investors to be so magnanimous.  Also, in this particular case it is a big ingenuous.  Authy was a YC company, so Sam's firm held a 7% common stock equity stake and benefited from the other angels holding the short end of the stick.  But as Dave says,

the truth of this matter is angels & small investors get FUCKED all the time by high cap debt, & founders don't seem 2 give a shit

If you are interested in drilling deeper in to this tweetstorm or discussing any other entrepreneurial topics, I am hosting a fireside chat with Dave on April 1 (No Joke!) at the new SJSU Theatre on campus as part of our Silicon Valley Center for Entrepreneurship Eminent Speaker Series.  We are also looking to break the current campus record for most f-bombs in an hour.  The event is free and open to the public.  You can register here

Is the Unicorn Endangered or Extinct?

Before diving in to the topic at hand, I realize Professor VC has been gone for a long time. Although I don't blog for the sake of blogging, I am committed to writing more regularly this year.  In fact, that was one of my New Year's Resolutions for 2015.  My other was going to the eye doctor and I have an appointment for this coming Monday. Nothing like checking off your resolutions in the 2nd month of the year!

My favorite podcast is This American Life, hosted by my business school classmate Karen's brother, Ira.  It is hit and miss from week to week, but stories are well researched, interesting, and often downright hilarious!  One of my favorites is a Little Bit of Knowledge (Episode 293) that has stories on people who believe certain things such as childhood myths well past the age when they should.

In the episode, Kristy Kruger talks about picturing unicorns roaming the planes in Africa as a kid and being at a party many years later when the topic of conversation turned to endangered species:

It was about a group of five to seven people, kind of standing around the keg, just talking. And somehow a discussion of endangered species came up, in which I posed the question, is the unicorn endangered or extinct? And basically, there was a big gap of silence.

I doubt Aileen Lee of Cowboy Ventures believed that a horse with a horn existed when she wrote Welcome To The Unicorn Club: Learning From Billion-Dollar Startups in late 2013, but she probably had no idea that it would become a hot buzzword in Silicon Valley and hit the cover of mainstream business press, Fortune Magazine.

The subtitle on the cover asks the question "At least 80 Tech Startups are Worth $1 Billion or More?  Is this Boom for Real?" Before answering this question, it is good to at least address the B word (no not Billion, but Bubble).  When I pulled the current issue of Fortune out of my mailbox, it reminded me of my reaction to another Fortune cover almost 10 years ago.

When I pulled out the May 30, 2005 issue with Real Estate Gold Rush on the cover and posting the question "Inside the hot-money work of housing speculators, condo-flippers, and get-rich-quick schemers. Is it too late to get in?"  My thought was not whether it was too late to get in, but how quickly one could get out! The article profiled one of the flippers:

"Zareh Tahmassebian is on the way to look at two of his houses in Phoenix. He is lost. Most people don't get lost driving to their own residence, but then, Tahmassebian has never actually been to these particular homes. There are a few reasons for that: (1) He has no intention of ever moving into them, (2) he lives in Las Vegas, not Phoenix, and (3) he owns six other houses--and a half share of seven more--in the greater Phoenix area. "Sometimes it's hard to keep track," he says.  Tahmassebian, just 22, is a big, affable guy who dresses the way a budding young speculator should: black trousers, a blue-and-white-striped shirt, cuff links, a Cartier watch, black suede loafers, and rimless purple sunglasses. The son of Armenian immigrants, he has spent the past four years in Las Vegas working as a mortgage banker, a job that he says paid him $250,000 in salary and commissions last year."

I'm not about to compare the current state of private company valuations to the real estate bubble or even the dot-com bubble.  The real estate bubble was practically a Ponzi scheme driven by greedy (is there another kind?) investment bankers, while the dot com bubble was driven by investment bankers willing and able to convince institutional and retail investors that companies didn't need to have a business model or even a way to exist without relying on additional investment.

No, the question today is not whether these unicorns are viable businesses.  For the most part, they have proven that.  The question is whether the valuations can be supported.  For example, Uber (not a startup but someone should let TechCrunch know) is private and has a valuation greater than 70% of the Fortune 500.

Back in the day, tech companies typically went public at market caps in $100 - $250M range.  Late private and early public investors were richly rewarded.  With companies remaining private much longer today, most of the value appreciation is pre-IPO.  I don't think the intent of the JOBS Act was to have companies remain private longer, but has had this result by increasing the investor limit prior to required reporting.

Former students who are readers of this blog may recall the Amazon IPO case from Entrepreneurial Finance class.  Amazon priced it's IPO in 1997 at approximately $500M (the $18 IPO price was an increase from the $12-$14 range) and first trade was at $29.25 or a market cap of $800M.  It's previous financing round was a little over a year prior to the IPO and was a $8M raise at a $60M pre-money valuation led by John Doerr of Kleiner Perkins.  Kleiner got a markup of approximately 12X at the IPO.  However, the bulk of the gains were earned post IPO as Amazon's current market cap is $175B or a 2,500X increase from the IPO.  If Uber were to go public at its current private valuation, it would have a market cap of $100 Trillion.  No company has ever crossed the $1 Trillion threshold.  That wouldn't be a unicorn.  That would be a unicorn mermaid and cyclops all rolled in one!

Again, we are talking about Amazon, a company that has completely disrupted the business of retail commerce among other things.  We should also remember that Amazon went public at a time (Q2 1997) when many companies were pulling IPO filings because the market was beating up Internet valuations.  In the year prior to Amazon's IPO, 23 Internet companies had gone public at valuations ranging from $63M to $485M, including Etrade ($380M), CNET ($211M), and First Virtual (79M).  At the time of the Amazon IPO, most of these were trading at prices 50%+ less than the IPO price.

Benchmark Capital VC (and former tech analyst) Bill Gurley wrote a post on bubbles a year ago and took a lot of flack for it, but I tend to listen to a guy like Bill who has been around for several cycles and even more so to Warren Buffet who has been around for many more than Bill or I have:

"Warren Buffet has a famous quote, 'Be fearful when others are greedy and greedy when others are fearful.' Using this traditionally contrarian investment mindset, one would certainly tread with trepidation in today’s market. Although we may have not reached the level of observing obvious greediness, there is most certainly an absence of fear. Those that managed companies in 2008 or thirteen years ago in 2001 know exactly how fear feels. And this is not it."

This also gets me thinking of the old poker adage:

 "if you are sitting around the poker table for 30 minutes and can't figure out who the sucker is, it's you." 

I'm a pretty good poker player but can figure out relatively quickly when I'm outmatched.  I don't want to be the last money in or the guy holding the bag.  Recently, I was given the opportunity to invest in unicorns including Dropbox, Lyft, Palantir, and Spotify.  I passed on all.  Not because they aren't excellent companies, but primarily based on valuations.  Is Dropbox at an $8B private valuation worth 4X more than Box as a public company?

For Lyft, it is much more painful.  I was an informal advisor to the founders from the time they were the only two employees.  In 2008, I made an investment offer of $250K for approximately 38% of the company ($400,000 pre-money valuation).  The current valuation of $2B is 3,000X the proposed post-money valuation of that seed term sheet. (igthwghjg2q2g8hu4). Sorry about that.  Just needed a good cry on the keyboard...Logan and John were wise to turn down the offer and continue to bootstrap Lyft (Zimride at the time).  However, I imagine we could've gotten the deal done at a valuation in the $1M range.

Yes, I do believe that late stage valuations are out of whack but remain excited about early stage opportunities.  Also, as the secondary market continues to mature, there will be many more opportunities to get liquid while companies are still private, reaping the rewards that early public investors would've had in days gone by.

Now back to our friend, Zareh, from the real estate flipper article.  I was curious to find out what happened to him.  I couldn't find a linkedin profile, but a quick google search did turn up a number of lawsuits and foreclosures.

If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.  Just like Unicorns as imagined by a child.