We are going to start with this picture of one Lucas Duplan, about whom I last wrote nearly a full decade ago. The post is worthy of a re-read, since it’s especially sassy, even for me.
Duplan was given tens of millions of dollars to create a shitty app, and the company failed, and he was swiftly forgotten. That’s how it’s supposed to work.
I seriously haven’t thought of that episode since I wrote about it, but I vaguely figured the days of goofy kids with their mouths gaping open getting tens of millions of dollars were behind us. How wrong I was.
A lengthy article just appeared in The Atlantic which catalogs how VCs are roaming the once-academic halls of Stanford’s campus looking for kids who just got their pubes and might have a really spiffy AI idea to fund. I’ve highlighted some excerpts below. Let’s begin.
So, like Epstein, they like ’em young. We continue………
Pre-idea funding. Good God. I mean, honestly, I realize that I idealize the true Silicon Valley and the days when Apple was funded by selling a calculator and old VW bus, but the notion of huge checks being handed to kids for “pre-idea funding” makes me want to vomit directly down the throat of John Doerr.
Speaking of throats…….
In case you’re wondering what Ms. Miura-Ko looks like, I’ve solved that problem for you.
One of the aforementioned Stanford geniuses has her own take at making the world a better place for you ‘n’ me.
Embryo screening. Designer babies. Humans as bespoke products. This is getting dark.
For all the flak Sam Altman gets, he seems to get it:
An anti-signal indeed. I daresay the likelihood of success of some smug young prick at Stanford getting millions for his pre-idea company is just about zero. And these kids aren’t immune to the temptations of youth, either:
Who the holy hell gave this drug addict a $20 million check? And what’s his company going to do? You can bank of that $20 million never being seen again, although it does, I suppose, buy a lot of acid.
The tales of corruption run even deeper.
Depressing, isn’t it? But the VCs honestly don’t care. They’ll have out money to anyone with a pulse, even if what they’re funding is a total fiction.
All of which is part of the reason that pleasant homes in my neighborhood which were originally the domiciles of upper-middle class professionals are now priced at about $25 million.
This is just more evidence of the late-stage capitalism we’re in, and my hand to God, when this whole farce comes crashing down, no one is going to celebrate more loudly than I am, since I’m in the middle of this entire whirlpool of nonsense.
