Glad you've taken an introductory critical thinking course. This isn't ad-hominem. Raising doubts of the validity of someone's statement based on inherent conflict of interest is a valid line of argument.
No, it would be a valid argument if the argument was "Marc Andreesen says this, therefore it must be true". It happens that Andreesen said these things, but I pointed that out because I wouldn't want people to think they were my insights.
You'll have to actually address the points themselves, sorry.
> Gather round: here we have a rare example of the North American Ivory-Billed True Ad-Hominem Fallacy in its natural habitat.
This is definitely ad-hominem, yourself.
> It is obviously possible for Andreeson to simultaneously be chief among "bubble deniers" and also correct about private company valuations.
Whatever, dude. Marc's point may be relevant for small slices of small firms, but no one has ever spent $500M on what are effectively equity call options outside of a bubble. As such, I posit in the case of AirBnB his logic is not applicable. So he's only just a bubble denier and not correct about private company valuations.
"no one has ever spent $500M on what are effectively equity call options outside of a bubble. As such, I posit in the case of AirBnB his logic is not applicable."
No one has ever seen a black swan outside of their dreams. If you see a black swan, you must be dreaming.
What do you expect him to say? "All these companies I have invested in aren't worth as much as everyone says they are"? "You guys shouldn't be investing in VC (including us) right now"?
