Public markets don't give regular people anything. At best it lets middle and upper class people pick off the left overs that Goldman Sachs & Co can't figure out how to take for themselves. I'm talking about giving the first 1,000 Airbnb users equity at angel prices. That's how you get life changing multiples for very small tech investors.
This isn't how investing works. You can't just hand wave a situation in which one of the most successful tech companies ever should have offered its early shares to more people. If you went back to the early days of AirBNB and told the early members they could either have the $1,000 from renting their room or .01% of AirBNB's stock, almost all of them are going to take the $1,000. Tons of VCs passed on AirBNB because they thought it was a bad investment.
I'm not against crowdfunding, I think it is great. But to pretend that angel investing is some sort of easy money is ridiculous. Companies like AirBNB which are successful are incredibly rare. Most companies fail and return nothing. Valuations for companies have also gone way up and there is no way to know whether investing now is actually a good deal or not. That is the point of investing, you are hoping for additional returns by taking more risk.
You're no authority on "how investing works", so consider expressing your personal opinions in a less arrogant way.
It's hard to imagine why you think VCs not understanding Airbnb's potential means that the actual users of Airbnb didn't understand it. I absolutely believe many of the early hosts would have elected to have 5% or 10% of their earnings turned into stock certificates. And of course, I'm talking about future companies that fit the Airbnb profile.
Users will be wrong and lose money, but you're wrong if you think regular people can't predict successful companies earlier and better than VCs. They're the ones that actually pick who wins in the market after all.
I'm unsure why you're sure he's not an authority. This is HN, not some random group of people Seems like he has a decent background to know what he's talking about.
Enough authority to purport to tell other people "how investing works"? Not even if he's Ron Conway. Startup investing is undergoing radical changes, no one knows what will work best in the future.
