⚡️MICHAEL CARNEY ⚡️

MD @ Starshot Ventures (VC / PE / RE) | Prev. EVOKE, UpfrontVC 🏠 LA via PHI | 💜 @stephanieuchima + 👦🏼👧🏼👧🏻 **No investment advice, views my own**

[⚡️MICHAEL CARNEY ⚡️ @mcarney]

PERSONAL ANNOUNCEMENT: I'm thrilled to share that I've begun a new role as Managing Director of Starshot Ventures and Head of Starshot Capital Management, the private family office of Kurt Seidensticker (founder and former CEO of Vital Proteins). I'm exited to further the great work done to date by Kurt and his team in building and backing category defining companies and world-class operators across CPG / wellness, AI-first software, hospitality, and real estate.

[⚡️MICHAEL CARNEY ⚡️ @mcarney]

@USGA @PlayMassGolf @GSGA @GAofPhilly @thewpga @grok convert the figures in the above thread to per capita

[⚡️MICHAEL CARNEY ⚡️ @mcarney]

This is the way

[Autism Capital 🧩 @AutismCapital]

X Pro Tip: Use lists. It's really the best way to curate the feed to your exact liking. It's like being able to switch the algo at any time. You can have a tech list, finance list, politics list, games list, anime list, memes list, etc. It takes upfront work to curate but it will be the actual content you want to see. It also sorts chronologically so you can see the most recently posted content first.

Subtip: Be judicious in the lists. Think of each list as an elite team. If you start overcrowding the lists you lose signal. Be discerning for your best experience.

Until the algo is fixed this is your best bet to curating your experience to your taste.

[⚡️MICHAEL CARNEY ⚡️ @mcarney]

@ankurnagpal You’ve got my attention

[⚡️MICHAEL CARNEY ⚡️ @mcarney]

@KVanValkenburg I’ll raise you this one:

[Total Browns move @TotalBrownsMove]

@acaseofthegolf1 These guys didn’t make it to lunch. They can still get McDonald’s breakfast

[Adam Louis-Klein @adam_louis52328]

There’s a deep underlying analogy between what has happened to Charlie Kirk since his murder and what has happened to Israel since October 7. In both cases, there was a clear act of violence against an innocent victim. And in both cases, instead of recognizing the wrongness of that violence, many have sought to blame the victim—pointing out their faults as if that somehow justified the killing.

They fail to grasp that innocence, in relation to a crime, does not require moral perfection. A person can be flawed and still not deserve to be killed. A country can have problems and still not deserve massacre. But instead of acknowledging this, they fixate on imperfections—real or invented—in order to make the violence seem less shocking and less criminal.

And it doesn’t stop there. They don’t just highlight flaws—they engage in libel: decontextualizing quotes, spreading distortions, even fabricating claims, all to create the impression that the victim deserved it. The goal is not explanation, but to exonerate the perpetrator.

That’s the core of the analogy. Whether in the form of antisemitic libel or more general attacks, libel functions to erase the very concept of innocence. It turns victims into aggressors and makes illegitimate violence look justified.

[⚡️MICHAEL CARNEY ⚡️ @mcarney]

@cremieuxrecueil @cremieuxrecueil I’ve got a confirmed answer to this question but need to share offline. Shoot me a DM if interested

[⚡️MICHAEL CARNEY ⚡️ @mcarney]

@nicochristie Running a family office with tons of home-grown modeling across VC, RE, CPG opco’s. Would love to take this for a spin

[⚡️MICHAEL CARNEY ⚡️ @mcarney]

@nicochristie Impressive! Would love to take it for a spin

[⚡️MICHAEL CARNEY ⚡️ @mcarney]

@msuster Shhhhh…they can hear you!

[⚡️MICHAEL CARNEY ⚡️ @mcarney]

@roblox, it’s been multiple days and still no response from your support department.z we’ve submitted multiple tickets to no avail and you have made no effort to rectify this outrageous situation. How can a minor account with parental control in place simply change their age to 18 and thereby break all parental oversight??? This person is now reaching out to our son’s friends and trying to fish them as well. You have a problem on your hands and you’re asleep at the wheel

[⚡️MICHAEL CARNEY ⚡️ @mcarney]

Hey @Roblox, my 9yo’s account got fished in your chat and the attacker has been able to remove parental controls and change the age to 18yo without our approval. Your support ticket responses have been utterly-unhelpful and frankly hostile. How is this an acceptable account security policy for a minor account?

[⚡️MICHAEL CARNEY ⚡️ @mcarney]

@nikitabier @gxdia @tjparker Not to be confused with ANGC which is an elite golf club but which has shitty cash yield

[⚡️MICHAEL CARNEY ⚡️ @mcarney]

What a tour de force

[Dan Gray @credistick]

"I heard stories that last year, end of 2022, when the auditors were getting involved, they were telling GPs to talk to each other to try to figure out how to value things."

(source: Beezer Clarkson of Sapphire Partners)

2022 was the year that pissed-off LPs put a spotlight on poor valuation practices, with different VCs holding the same company at radically different marks.

This is not a simple issue, and nor is it just a question of correctly setting marks or entry price. The failure of venture capital to properly address valuation has cascaded into a number of other problems.

The majority of "venture capital wisdom" today was hastily assembled during the SaaS bull run from 2011 to 2021 and is designed to cram money into high growth companies.

In this transition, the concept of "valuation" was slowly squeezed out by "pricing". Few managers can now really claim to understand the former.

Instead of looking to understand the intrinsic value of an idea, investors began to simply follow the market. Were others investing in similar companies? How were they priced? In this environment, multiples (mostly multiples on ARR) seemed like a practical tool.

Historically, multiples were a tool for price comparison after a valuation had been completed:

"We often pursue this kind of rationalization as a spot check, generally after going through the valuation process. When the multiple is implied, investors will then compare it to others seen in the public and private markets to get more comfortable. Think of it like a gut check, a way to determine if the valuation feels 'reasonable'."

(source: "When Entry Multiples Don’t Matter" - @a16z)

In the rush to accelerate capital velocity in the low interest rate environment, multiples became the defacto approach for quickly pricing rounds.

Four major problems stem from this:

1. The fundamentally procyclical nature of comparative pricing has weakened returns and concentrated risk for venture capital.

2. The herding of capital into SaaS means it is now far less likely that exits will appear on a scale to produce the required returns in this sector.

3. Founders build in sectors where VCs more easily understand value. The habitual use of multiples has shifted activity to SaaS, away from (e.g.) deep tech.

4. Focusing solely on revenue has incentivised founders to sacrifice financial health, often resorting to cheap accounting tricks or fraud in some cases.

The focus on revenue multiples has incentivised capital intensive business models that spend every dollar on creating more revenue growth, to drive up value and raise more capital to fuel more growth.

The outcome is companies that have poor unit economics, little in the way of a competitive moat, and weak financial health. These are not attractive targets for IPO or acquisition, which is why venture capital has a huge liquidity problem today.

It has turned venture capital into an engine that burns a lot of cash to produce huge excess heat and relatively little kinetic energy.

"There are two ways to come up with a value for a financial asset. The first is to calculate an intrinsic value by discounting future cash flows. If the stock market is efficient, price and value will be the same. The second is to compare investments that are similar and buy the relatively undervalued one and sell the overvalued one. If a sufficient number of investors are doing this, few will outperform the market"

(source: "Everything Is a DCF Model" - @MorganStanley)

Fundamentally, using multiples to price a company is a delegation of responsibility to the market. In public markets, where there is more price tension and shares are more liquid, this can make sense. This is why it's so difficult to outperform index funds.

In private markets, this is very different. The whole ballgame for venture capital firms is finding outlier companies and novel concepts. The idea that they could be appropriately priced by the market is obviously silly, although it probably explains recent underperformance.

In conclusion, after a decade of sneering at "excel jockeys" and financial engineering, venture capital needs a rennaisance of financial literacy.

Investors don't need to start building detailed DCFs for each investment they make, but they should at least understand the main drivers of value and how to measure them in the context of a unique scenario.

It means learning how to read and understand financial forecasts, and build logical connections with business models, strategies and markets. It means looking for sustainable competitive advantage, not just rapid scalability.

Mostly, it means questioning all of the dogma that has appeared in venture since 2011.

[⚡️MICHAEL CARNEY ⚡️ @mcarney]

Family friend in PV attempted to maintain a city-owned canyon in their backyard a few years ago after being threatened w/ insurance non-renewal. Crew was there under 3hr before sheriff showed up and issued a fine + C&D.

You’d hope that the response would be different today, but sadly I doubt it

[⚡️MICHAEL CARNEY ⚡️ @mcarney]

@ilyasu Even worse, many are full 20% carry

[Richard Hanania @RichardHanania]

Unions in the 1950s originally opposed container shipping, which reduced the cost of shipping from $6 to 16 cents a tons. Today they oppose further automatization. The union is arguably acting in its interests, but the interest of the rest of humanity is to crush them.

[⚡️MICHAEL CARNEY ⚡️ @mcarney]

@mignano @lightspeedvp @nikitabier Smart partnership between @nikitabier & @lightspeedvp. Congrats to all involved!

[⚡️MICHAEL CARNEY ⚡️ @mcarney]

@seoulbtc @HealthcareREguy @JohnnyC__ Rolling Hills, Hidden Hills, and Rancho Santa Fe (SD) are all sister cities developed by the same group to be private, gated horse communities

[Michael Kim @MKRocks]

Not a 20 min podcast 😉 @Kells_Bells and I did an 1.5 hour podcast with Alex Shahidi, Co-CIO of Evoke Advisors We go in depth on Pre-Seed and Seed VC and our investment approach at @CendanaCapital
Outstanding, probing questions from Alex who is a very thoughtful investor 💥

https://t.co/6h7z2LbQsO