Compared to ordinary investors, Buffet's alpha is consistently high. He looks like a genius. But if you change the definition of alpha based on his strategy, his alpha ends up being much lower. Personally, I don't think that diminished Buffet in any way: he came up with the strategy, after all; but it does show that his investments work because he's doing something different than the competition.
And, again, Y Combinator is also doing something different than the competition (or at least, different from what the competition was doing when YC launched), but it's also doing something wildly different from Berkshire Hathaway. BH invests in a small number of mature companies, YC invests in many small and risky companies. I would be interested to see what kind of personalized alpha YC manages to get (and, even, what kind of generic alpha they have). I don't know if they publish their investment numbers, so I don't know if it would be possible to calculate.
Compared to ordinary investors, Buffet's alpha is consistently high. He looks like a genius. But if you change the definition of alpha based on his strategy, his alpha ends up being much lower. Personally, I don't think that diminished Buffet in any way: he came up with the strategy, after all; but it does show that his investments work because he's doing something different than the competition.
And, again, Y Combinator is also doing something different than the competition (or at least, different from what the competition was doing when YC launched), but it's also doing something wildly different from Berkshire Hathaway. BH invests in a small number of mature companies, YC invests in many small and risky companies. I would be interested to see what kind of personalized alpha YC manages to get (and, even, what kind of generic alpha they have). I don't know if they publish their investment numbers, so I don't know if it would be possible to calculate.