I think the VCs that invested the money into Neumann and Holmes are also snake oil salespeople, hoping to to dump it off on the public markets during frothy times. Is anyone supposed to believe that the smartest people educated at the finest institutions in the world don't know how to do basic due diligence before throwing their money at businesses that don't scale, yet valuing them as if they do?
Or that wealth is not an indicator of anything and some stupid people are rich because of a fragile broken system which doesn't reward based on meritocratic standards always.
In my opinion very few of the smartest, most successful businesspeople attribute their success to anything they learned at an institution. There are essentially no traditional institutions that can teach you how to be a great entrepreneur, identify those people, or help them be successful.
A good entrepreneur knows how to navigate a downturn. A successful entrepreneur gets lucky (or puts themselves in better positions) and isn't afraid to gamble.
There must be some element of that. Wasn't there a company that promised to charge phones over the air with ultrasound? The basic math showed it would never work, but they had lots of VC backing.
