The woeful performance has been in the credibility of VCs. 

In March, VCs helped trigger a bank run that destroyed Silicon Valley Bank, the lender that has been integral to the startup economy for decades and which was itself the bank of choice for more than 1,000 VC firms.

And this past week we witnessed VCs grab the pitchforks in a protest against crime and lawlessness in San Francisco after the tragic, fatal stabbing of Cash App creator Bob Lee in the streets. San Francisco’s “criminal-loving city council” that enabled the killer “have Bob’s literal blood on their hands,” tweeted Matt Ocko, a partner at DCVC. David Sacks, a cofounder of VC firm Craft, said he would “bet dollars to dimes,” that the crime was similar to a stabbing in Los Angeles that involved a “psychotic homeless person.”

The only problem, as we know now, is that Lee wasn’t a victim of random street crime or an attack by a homeless person. According to the police, he was killed by another tech entrepreneur as a result of some dispute. 

VCs are in the business of making bets, it’s sort of their raison d’être. When a VC bets dollars to dimes, people listen because they represent the “smart money,” the elite class of investors who have brilliant insights and can spot unique, against-the-grain ideas.

Just look at the lofty principles espoused on some of the leading VC firm websites:

“The most contrarian thing to do is think independently,” crows one well-known firm’s website. Another site associates itself with “The outsiders. The defiant. The independent thinkers.”

If the first four months of 2023 are any indication, however, VCs have shown that they are all too human, perhaps even more vulnerable to panic and groupthink than some humans. 

I’m generalizing of course. Not all VCs joined in the Bob Lee freakout. Garry Tan, the CEO of Y Combinator, who has been a leading voice in criticizing San Francisco’s homeless problem and its policing, was admirably restrained when news of Lee’s death emerged, tweeting that with so little known about the circumstances, it was too early to speculate about what happened.

And of course, the quick leap to conclusions about Lee’s death wasn’t limited to VCs — tech entrepreneurs, startup founders, and executives joined in the pile on too. Elon Musk famously fulminated about the horrific violent crime in San Francisco and the attackers who get set free.

San Francisco has plenty of problems, and is grappling with the same challenges, including homelessness and property crimes, that many big cities face these days. No one thinks the status quo is acceptable, but hyperbole and paranoia won’t help.

After all the discussion lately about A.I. “hallucinations,” the events of recent months are a reminder that we humans still have many bugs. Maybe we need a 6-month moratorium on VCs tweeting?

Want to send thoughts or suggestions to Data Sheet? Drop a line here.

Alexei Oreskovic

Data Sheet’s daily news section was written and curated by Andrea Guzman. 

NEWSWORTHY

Discord leaker arrest. Jack Teixeira, a 21-year-old Air National Guardsman, was arrested Thursday in connection with the leak of highly classified documents related to Russia’s war in Ukraine. Teixeira reportedly led a Discord channel where the classified documents first appeared before spreading to 4Chan, Telegram, and Twitter. Though the platform with 150 million users worldwide has bolstered its content moderation in recent months, the ease it offers for people to use with anonymity has made it a significant platform for cybercrime communication, the Financial Times reports.

Subscriptions come to Twitter. Twitter users can now charge for access to their content. The technical aspects of the plan aren’t clear yet, but for the first 12 months, Twitter won’t keep any of the money users make from subscriptions. This monetization plan that competes with Substack’s comes after the site launched a Notes feature that offers a public feed similar to Twitter.

Parler’s temporary shutdown. Digital media conglomerate Starboard has acquired Parler, a platform that became popular after Twitter and Facebook banned Donald Trump following the Jan. 6 insurrection. Starboard plans to temporarily take the app down and launch a new version of the social network. The financial terms of the acquisition haven’t been disclosed, but Starboard expects the deal will be accretive by the end of the second quarter this year.

ON OUR FEED

“An earlier version of the letter claimed that OpenAI is training GPT-5 right now. We are not and won’t be for some time. So in that sense, it was sort of silly.”

—OpenAI CEO Sam Altman commenting on a letter that called for a six-month moratorium on the development of advanced A.I. systems during an event at MIT yesterday. He added that the company is doing other things on GPT-4 regarding safety issues.

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT

A.I.-powered chatbot Perplexity, backed by big names from Google and Meta, launches new features as search battle heats up, by Jeremy Kahn

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy took a 99% pay cut in 2022—and earned less than founder Jeff Bezos, by Eleanor Pringle

Elon Musk uses Twitter ‘to amplify his bad thinking,’ says NBA legend Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, by Steve Mollman

Amazon is taking on Google and Microsoft with its own generative A.I. as CEO Andy Jassy says it will be a ‘big deal’ for the company, by Tristan Bove

Twitter expands crypto and stock price data as Elon Musk pushes to remake platform into ‘everything app’, by Ben Weiss

BEFORE YOU GO

The first video game theme song in the Library of Congress. The Super Mario Bros music, also called the "Ground Theme," has been given a place in the U.S. national recording registry. The song was written by Nintendo composer Koji Kondo, and since appearing in the 1985 theme from Super Mario Bros, has become “the most recognizable video game theme in history,” the library said. It’s joined by Mariah Carey’s "All I Want for Christmas Is You" and Madonna’s Like a Virgin album as some of “the defining sounds of the nation’s history and culture.”