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A comment on SoftBank expects $24B in losses from Vision Fund, WeWork and OneWeb. Parent comment

Re:SoftBank expects $24B in losses from Vision Fund, WeWork ... by duxup on Tuesday April 14, 2020 @04:27PM (#22871046)
Biotech is a weird space for "tech" like ventures.

Generally actual tech startups don't have a lot of patience.

Biotech research as I understand it is naturally highly iterative and immediate payouts are rare.

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Re:SoftBank expects $24B in losses from Vision Fund, WeWork ... by bsder on Tuesday April 14, 2020 @04:50PM (#22871274)
> Generally actual tech startups don't have a lot of patience.

This wasn't true in the pre-2000. It was only the DotCom(tm) era that spoiled VC's who all wanted hits within 36 months.

The history of the valley was the history of slow investments. Semiconductors are money hungry and slow--yet VC's invested in them until about 2000.

I would argue a lot of the lack of progress in tech is because all the VC money is chasing fast returns.

I find Musk insufferable, but, credit where it is due, he put investment money into two VERY slow industries.

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Re:SoftBank expects $24B in losses from Vision Fund, WeWork ... by hodgesrm on Tuesday April 14, 2020 @06:38PM (#22872349)
> The history of the valley was the history of slow investments. Semiconductors are money hungry and slow--yet VC's invested in them until about 2000.

Not all of them were slow. Intel IPO'ed slightly over 3 years after founding. [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_Intel

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Re:SoftBank expects $24B in losses from Vision Fund, WeWork ... by ericd on Tuesday April 14, 2020 @05:01PM (#22871388)
Do you know if the standard 10 year fund life was different back then? If not, I'm curious how that interacted with their relatively slow investments.

Maybe it's just that companies went public at a much earlier stage back then.

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Re:SoftBank expects $24B in losses from Vision Fund, WeWork ... by achillesheels on Tuesday April 14, 2020 @05:13PM (#22871527)
>Maybe it's just that companies went public at a much earlier stage back then.

This. My father worked for a few semiconductor startups in the 80's, e.g. Xicor. Liquidity events were trivial compared to now. Small company's with competency and focus could exit with a proprietary tech play which satisfied everyone all around (founders, vested employees, investors, industry). Rinse and repeat for two-three decades and we get the foundations for Information "Tech" startup culture.

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Re:SoftBank expects $24B in losses from Vision Fund, WeWork ... by Zach_the_Lizard on Tuesday April 14, 2020 @06:16PM (#22872156)
It's costlier to be a public company these days in terms of regulatory burden, so fewer companies in general are going public.

SOX in particular is expensive for smaller companies.

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Re:SoftBank expects $24B in losses from Vision Fund, WeWork ... by goatinaboat on Tuesday April 14, 2020 @04:43PM (#22871185)
Generally actual tech startups don't have a lot of patience.

The tech that Silly Valley was originally built on was hardware with multi-year development cycles. “Tech” as a synonym for “ad supported website” is a very recent thing.

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Re:SoftBank expects $24B in losses from Vision Fund, WeWork ... by creamyhorror on Thursday April 16, 2020 @05:00AM (#22887464)
1998 is not that recent any more, to be honest. Though admittedly it wasn't called 'tech' back then, but "dot com". Still, it was the same thing: web service startups.
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Re:SoftBank expects $24B in losses from Vision Fund, WeWork ... by aussiegreenie on Tuesday April 14, 2020 @05:21PM (#22871600)
I am working with several medical tech companies. It is "true" venture funding. The main company has bone implants technology and is a "Billion dollar company" in seven years if everything goes well. Even after four years of R&D revenue is still 18 months away. And that is in the thousands not millions. Full commercial production is about four years away.

Here are some the joys:

1. Long lead times

2. Highly regulated

3. Conservative buyers

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Re:SoftBank expects $24B in losses from Vision Fund, WeWork ... by ware_am_i on Tuesday April 14, 2020 @07:16PM (#22872619)
Great to see someone else on HN enjoying the special nature of medtech (I consult and advise a few as well). Would love to share notes -> chris(at)medlaunchnow.com
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Re:SoftBank expects $24B in losses from Vision Fund, WeWork ... by hkmurakami on Tuesday April 14, 2020 @07:44PM (#22872816)
80’s hardware startups took plenty of patient science/engineering risk.

Impatient startup behavior is a relatively recent phenomenon and even today there are plenty of startups that ask for multiple years of R&D work.

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Re:SoftBank expects $24B in losses from Vision Fund, WeWork ... by vikramkr on Tuesday April 14, 2020 @06:05PM (#22872065)
For the past few years it was not unusual for a company to ipo within 12 months of raising a seed round in biotech. In my experience, biotech investors are still using 5 year fund horizons etc which make them far far more impatient than tech investors. Tech has had private markets willing to pour billions in to allow companies to stay private for over a decade (airbnb, uber, etc) at huge valuations, while biotechs have been pushed to IPO ASAP
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Re:SoftBank expects $24B in losses from Vision Fund, WeWork ... by Avicebron on Tuesday April 14, 2020 @06:09PM (#22872101)
I work with several biotech companies, I've observed project decentralization also become a large barrier to return on investment. Startups often develop a "go virtual" mindset prior to a lot of their products being ready for deployment. This coupled with the relative complexity of novel biotech products can burn through runway and make big investments riskier than an ad-revenue supported web product.
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