Let's turn that around for a second and look at it as though it is true:
A bunch of 'angels' (for want of a better term, none of them were sprouting wings) get together in a bar but omit one of the regulars.
They discuss in great detail the way in which they are going to 'corner the market' and convince each other that nobody will invest in any start-up over a certain price point.
How long do you think that would fly in the real world. Before they'd been out of the door someone would have already decided to break the arrangement, it's the nature of the beast you're dealing with here, and besides, most if not all of the dealings between angels and their investment targets are confidential so you'd never know anyway.
I wasn't agreeing with Arringtons view on this when I read it, I just interpreted it as 'wow, you take being marginalized quite badly', and this post pretty much confirms that that may be all there is to it.
Hell hath no fury like a 'blogger' scorned it seems.
It's not as though people need Arringtons permission to meet, and it's not as though every meeting that he isn't in on is automatically grounds for suspecting a cartel being formed.
Earlier this summer when LeBron James decided to go to Miami to play with Dwyane Wade, there was a lot of discussion over the next week about the fact that many players have basically grown up together in the countless shoe company basketball camps and all-everything teams that top recruits go through these days. The lament was that you don't compete against your friends the same way you compete against rivals you have some distance from, and it was starting to affect the league, even to the point where players who you'd expect would want to carry their own teams instead decide to play together.
"Worked out among friends at a "summit" earlier this summer, the James free-agency move – aired live as ESPN's "The Decision" segment Thursday night – in one stroke shifted the NBA's power structure and could undermine attempts to achieve parity in a league dominated by a few select teams."
(I bet Mike Arrington wasn't invited to that meeting either.)
If your presumption regarding collusion were true (that it can't hold up in the real world), then there would never have been any cases of collusion in the real world, yet we have plenty of examples.
There is plenty of anti-competitive in the real world (phone companies are a nice example, but Intel and Microsoft have a nice track record too), but in this particular case due to the nature of the material involved it would be extremely hard to collude in the first place and almost impossible to prove that it actually happened if it did.
A bunch of guys having dinner and talking over business is not collusion, they call it 'synergy'.
Collusion is: "Start-ups X, Y and Z suddenly found that none of the angels present at such and such a dinner would accept deals over <some value> or under <some conditions>."
And even then you'd have a very hard time proving that it was because they colluded.
Also, how long would it take one of these guys to figure out that if he 'broke' the rule just once that nobody could ever accuse him/her of it and he'd have a surefire winner because that start-up would have found doors closed everywhere else.
It simply isn't going to happen, the VC world (especially angel investments) is too competitive (not in the last place due to YC) and too closely watched to get away with any of this.
"get together in a bar but omit one of the regulars"
MA isn't an angel investor and isn't one of the regulars. My guess is that when they saw him they knew that he would report anything he sees/hears - hence their silence.
A bunch of 'angels' (for want of a better term, none of them were sprouting wings) get together in a bar but omit one of the regulars.
They discuss in great detail the way in which they are going to 'corner the market' and convince each other that nobody will invest in any start-up over a certain price point.
How long do you think that would fly in the real world. Before they'd been out of the door someone would have already decided to break the arrangement, it's the nature of the beast you're dealing with here, and besides, most if not all of the dealings between angels and their investment targets are confidential so you'd never know anyway.
I wasn't agreeing with Arringtons view on this when I read it, I just interpreted it as 'wow, you take being marginalized quite badly', and this post pretty much confirms that that may be all there is to it.
Hell hath no fury like a 'blogger' scorned it seems.
It's not as though people need Arringtons permission to meet, and it's not as though every meeting that he isn't in on is automatically grounds for suspecting a cartel being formed.