VC Markets, Reasoning and Age
your Saturday roundup
Professionally, I focus on creating social benefit startups. In my Saturday morning emails I share what I’m learning and thinking. Topics range from better living and parenting to business and philosophy.
VC Funding Market. With an increase in interest rates and some reduction in public markets ebullience, the number and valuation of startup investments has moderated. The change is most pronounced at later stages. Seed financing volume and valuations have held up pretty well, and there are still many more VC funds than ever before which bodes well for future fundraising. As Tom from Theory Ventures writes: “Seed valuations remained relatively constant… I noticed the seed market weathered through the global financial crisis relatively unscathed, a parallel to today - both about a 15% drop in pre-money valuations.” He also notes that recoveries can come faster than you think. “I plotted the QQQ (Nasdaq) value against venture Investing activity & venture Exits activity (all log normalized). The public markets & private markets are staggeringly correlated at 0.98 for QQQ/Investing & 0.93 for QQQ/Exits. But, it didn’t feel that way in the moment - at least not from my vantage point - the markets felt like molasses.“ Although with a new interest rate regime, we could see different dynamics this time. Regardless, the focus for early startups is building something customers want and building a high performing team. There is still plenty of opportunity.
Human Exceptionalism. There is a long line of arguments for human exceptionalism. As we learn more about biology and build more capable machines, many have been debunked. Meanwhile we have wondered if AI will reach a point where it is improving at an exponential rate and escapes understanding and control. Reaction Wheel offers a worthwhile essay on the topic. It reminds us that in nature or technology nothing has proven to be exponential but rather an S-curve. And it argues that the type of reasoning used in ML today does not encompass all human reasoning. In theory computers could do that type reasoning but we haven’t figured that out yet. The concepts in the essay are like critical rationalism without citation or contrast. I’m wondering if that was on purpose?
Age Segregation. What are the effects of age segregation in schools and summer camp? Schools and summer camps used to be more mixed and seemed to have increased age segregation even at recess. If true, what is the reason? I’m curious if it is helpful for the average kid or the average teacher, or prevents harm to a handful of kids more likely to get picked on. My naive sense is that mixed-age environments are helpful for learning and development for most kids. What do you know about this?
Until next time,
Miles
P.S. A loyal reader spotted some errors in the depression treatment summary from ChatGPT.
I agree that age segregation appears to be suboptimal. By way of anecdote, my elementary school had a mixed 3rd, 4th, and 5th grade class which was labeled as "The Interage." It was quite the vanguard of progressive education, made all the more incredible by the fact that it was implemented so well in a public school setting.
Some of the benefits of multiple ages included:
- Differentiated leveling of Math, Spelling, and other core subjects. It was common for all ages to be integrated to seamlessly allow for accelerated and remediated instruction.
- Ability for early mentoring opportunities. The "senior" 5th graders had an opportunity to help the younger students which is relatively rare at such a young age.