>> the key assumption that's baked into that statement is that everyone universally recognizes the 'best deals'. Of course that's not certain. The wisdom of the crowd may be better than VCs at recognizing the 'best deals'. I can easily imagine 'best deals' that the crowd identifies that VCs wouldn't fund.
Wholeheartedly agree with your statement - but keep in mind that VCs typically get access to way more information than what's available through a crowdfunding site.
All fair points. Especially the notion of api-company w developer investors. Investors naturally become evangelists for the company and that could prove to be amazing. Hasn't played out yet, but I believe it can be powerful.
I think Zenefits is an awesome company as well. With regards to allocating a slice to the crowd, I don't know how often that will happen. At least for me personally, if I commit to invest, I typically want to invest as much as possible (trying to learn from Buffett). That would likely mean that if I was investing in a round I would prefer that no slice is allocated to non-value add investors. Could certainly debate whether or not the "crowd" is a value-add investor.
I loved the quote though, just had to use it. I scanned all of the comments from the original post and the "Maserati" one was my hands-down favorite. :)
"radical transparency" is a powerful concept. Weird and uncomfortable at first - but I generally like it. In case anyone want's to see their 100+ page internal company manifesto, it's right here:
It seems to me there's a lot of interesting psychology elements to this, but it's also a simple reflection of relatively constant growth rates. If population of cities grow 3% every year, they will spend a lot more years in the 1 millions than the 9 millions, etc