And there are literally hundreds of similar companies raking in billions in investments that magically vanish while the founders live a luxury live and move on.

The real question is: why do VCs shit so much money into obvious frauds? Are they this stupid or do they just hope to pass it on to the greater fool?

[–] bassomitron@lemmy.world 33 points 1 month ago (1 children)

$500,000 is nothing to billionaires, or even people who make hundreds of millions a year. It's a lot to average folks like us, but to them it's the equivalent of going to the casino with money they can afford to blow.

But I do think you're right about passing it on to the greater fool. They bet it'll be the next hot product, regardless if they know it sucks or not. Then some bigger bag of money will come in and buy it up, thinking they'll be able to somehow milk a sustainable profit out of it. You'd think by now that VCs would be smarter about the boom and bust of tech startups, but alas...

[–] whatsgoingdom@rollenspiel.forum 23 points 1 month ago (2 children)

The bigger fool might also be the taxpayer. Oops the company we funded vanished - now we have a $500k loss to write off...

[–] bassomitron@lemmy.world 11 points 1 month ago

Sadly, I believe you're correct on that... sigh...

[–] roguetrick@lemmy.world 1 points 1 month ago

Overall billionaires wasting their money to pay for idiots that then waste it in consumption would be a tax positive, I believe. We should encourage that behavior instead of them buying assets and then extracting rents like the parasites they are. I don't care if they get to write off the money they lose from their income.