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A comment on Billionaire Peter Thiel makes fortune after sweetheart deal with [NZ] government. Parent comment

Re:Billionaire Peter Thiel makes fortune after sweetheart de... by vorg on Friday February 03, 2017 @05:45PM (#13564017)
> The governments goal was more along the lines of trying to spur entrepreneurial activity - they got that

Virtually all the fund's investment went into one company (Xero). If Thiel had already decided to invest in that company anyway (a plausible scenario), then his deal with the NZ govt is equivalent to receiving a free call option (if I remember my Options Theory correctly). And no entrepreneurial activity would have been spurred.

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Re:Billionaire Peter Thiel makes fortune after sweetheart de... by edblarney on Friday February 03, 2017 @10:08PM (#13565409)
I'm not making the case that Thiel's involvement may have been marginal - rather, simply that it could have been material.

But more so the general case: Governments do some things well - but not VC. And that if it requires collaboration with more aggressive VC's to spurn activity, well, then that's not so bad because it's very hard to do.

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