ChatGPT-maker OpenAI’s Sam Altman has a question for investors, gets reply from Indian tech CEO

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has raised a fresh question about the strategy of the venture capital (VC) industry, highlighting what he suggests a puzzling disconnect: the persistent aggregate losses despite continued funding inflows. His question got answers from a bunch of people, including Cred CEO Kunal Shah.
In a tweet posted on May 4, Altman pointed to the paradoxical trend of sustained VC investments even as the industry, in aggregate, continues to report long-term losses.
“This is much less important than tweeting about agi, but it is nevertheless amazing to me that the entire venture industry can (in aggregate) lose money for so long and keep getting funded,” he asked.
“i am very curious why LPs do it. (obviously if you can fund the top funds you should!),” Altman added.


Altman’s question received replies from several people, including CEOs, founders as well as co-founders of various companies. One stand-out reply was from Shah.
“Hopium,” Shah said.

Some defended the long-term, high-risk nature of venture capital, and others echoing Altman’s concerns about accountability and return on capital.
Amjad Masad, who is the CEO of Replit - an online integrated development environment (IDE) which allows users to write, run, and share code without the need for local setup - also replied to Altman.
“🤫 half of it goes to ai tokens and the other half to sf landlords,” he said.

VC is typically an allocation bet versus an active one building ok swensens endowment model of a balanced portfolio
Giving to a fund of vc funds or a group of funds diversifies risk and returns typically don’t come up for 7-10 years anyway
Like S&P losers fall away so net +ve