I think the other side of this is just buying Amazon stock based on the daring prediction that big grey buildings full of servers aren't going anywhere.
You obv. can't cause that would be a considerably easier and hence not a payoff worthy bet than the inverse of picking winners from an aspiring group of people trying to do something new in the world.
For all the financial inefficiencies of that - objectively - we get to benefit as humanity from the (expensive) mistakes of others.
So here's to whatever this is leading to much better insights about computing in space at best!
You know, that's a fascinating idea. Most startups fail, a few modestly succeed, but the unicorns are so profitable that they mostly make up for the rest. That reminds me of two fields: insurance and gambling.
Venture Capitalists are already like reverse insurance companies. They cover lots of people in the hopes that one of them will hit a rare event and it'll pay for the others.
Buying shares of a single startup is sort of the equivalent of betting on a specific horse to win a race. But what's the equivalent of lay betting (betting that a specific horse will NOT win)? Shorting? But you can't short a private company.
But wait, venture capitalists are already betting that their startups will make money. What if they were willing to double down a bit and accept lay bets? Say there was a kind of specialized short agreement that let you say "here is $x, if in N years company Y has less than $z profit/revenue, I get K*$x. Otherwise, VC gets to keep my $x." You could sell it to VCs as a way to do options trading on their own startup investments, plus it'd be a good way to get the wisdom of the crowds or whatever.
Can I take the other side of this investment? Like an angel funding round, but selling short?