Hey this is Bill Zito, Head of Constellation. Thank you for sharing feedback.
It sounds like you’re planning to write a future post on Constellation that I imagine might have more specifics and that we will have an opportunity to engage with in advance, so maybe it makes sense to respond more then. At the risk of oversimplifying a complex topic, it’s important to Constellation’s mission that Constellation is a good place to work and talk with others, and we care a lot about the culture being welcoming and comfortable for members and visitors.
We really appreciate feedback. If anyone has feedback on Constellation that they’d feel comfortable sharing with me, you can email me at bill@rdwrs.com.
I think $20B in 4y is somewhat of an outlier, even among super successful billionaire founders. Eg a few quick googles (assuming CEO has something like 10% of the company after several rounds of dilution)
Facebook founded 2004, 2008 valuation $15B, CEO $2B?
Airbnb founded 2008, 2012 valuation $2B, CEO $200M?
Uber founded 2009, 2013 valuation $3.5B, CEO $350M?
Stripe founded 2009, 2013 valuation $2B, CEO $200M?
Aurora founded 2017, 2021 valuation $13B, CEO has something like $4B
Tesla founded before Elon, but Elon CEO 2008, 2012 valuation $3.5B, CEO $400M?
I considered adding Google/Microsoft/Amazon/Apple to this list, but since valuations have increased a lot over time and they were started much earlier, they look less impressive, and it doesn’t feel quite fair.
Caveats:
perhaps there are many more quick crypto billionaires in particular, given how much crypto has increased over the last 4y
valuations have increased over time, and maybe people have examples of other tech founders of companies started closer to 2017 where the founders did better
several of the CEO’s on this list have gotten >$10B, it just took more like 10 years than 4