Vaynerchuk: I can no longer distinguish between real and fake entrepreneurs
Internet entrepreneur, investor, and social media expert Gary Vaynerchuk, the CEO of VaynerMedia, said that there’s so much opportunity for entrepreneurs that he’s actually pulled back from investing.
“I would argue this is the greatest time, so much so that as an early stage investor I’ve actually stopped investing,” Vaynerchuk told Yahoo Finance. “Because, everybody now is a founder and a startup entrepreneur and the supply and demand of actual good operators has scared me so much and it’s a little bit of a guessing game and I don’t know who’s a real entrepreneur and who’s a fake one.”
Vaynerchuk — an early investor in Facebook (FB), Twitter (TWTR) and Tumblr — says the investing environment today is different from the way it used to be.
“I just think things are inflated,” he said. “I think every kid that goes to Penn who has an idea thinks her company is worth six million dollars. And I mean that’s scary.
“And so, this is not 2006/2007 when I was investing in Facebook and Tumblr and Twitter. This is the ‘We’re … the Uber of housecleaning, but I’ve never built a business in my life. I was probably going to work at being a McKinsey, but now because of this gold rush I’m a startup founder and I’m an entrepreneur.’”
Vaynerchuk, an immigrant to the U.S., believes that the American dream is “massively alive and well.”
“As a matter of fact, I think the Internet being at scale today has compounded the opportunity,” he said. “When I see a lot of people who feel like the political climate, for example, is suppressing a female or a minority, I was trying to remind them like look this is the best time ever. The Internet doesn’t care what you look like. You can go direct to consumer with your offering. Nobody needs to be in your way.”
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Julia La Roche is a finance reporter at Yahoo Finance. Follow her on Twitter.
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