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Great examples of VCs never saying no directly and of a strange insider be-terse-and-get-out-of-my-way writing style.
That terseness is how Fred writes every email, it's not unique to this thread with Paul. When you try to reply to a couple hundred emails a day, this terseness is the result.
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Is it terse or is it just concise? So many 'business' people think that long waffling sentences seem clever and impressive. Nothing is further from the truth.
This is neither terse nor concise. Terse and concise means you write what you mean. When the VC writes, "we are still in the data-gathering phase", he really means "I see what you are saying, but my gut says no right now. I may contact you in the future when I know more." This is longer, but it actually means something. Instead of saying that he needs more data in order to make a decision, he's said that he needs mor…
It just seemed a very good sign to me that these guys were actually on the ground in NYC hunting down (and understanding) their users. That's a funny comment from paul because he was the one to tell them to go to NYC. That they went is to their credit, but still. I think of this sometimes with the pitch coaching for demo day. How many investors think "that's a great way to phrase that" when watching a presentation an…
>(Fred Wilson): I am also talking to my friend Mark Pincus who had an idea like this a few years ago. Mark Pincus is better known as the founder of Zynga, unless this is another Mark Pincus.
pg seemed a bit direct in terms of what he wanted in his email, which I found refreshing. On the other hand, Fred seemed to 'beat around the bush' as when he said 'we are in data gathering phase'. Just curious what the norm is around the vc/angel circles. Are most people pretty direct/candid? or do they mostly hide behind business speak?
I am surprised couchsurfing.org is nowhere mentioned - it was a working example already 5 years ago.
This seems right up USV's alley too. Marketplaces and platforms. If I remember correctly, USV didn't exactly pass, but made a play around the time Sequoia did.
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That terseness is how Fred writes every email, it's not unique to this thread with Paul. When you try to reply to a couple hundred emails a day, this terseness is the result.
i suspect you have a few of those in your gmail archives to andrew ;)
Fascinating conversation. Thanks for giving insight into how these deals work... >ABNB reminds me of Etsy in that it facilitates real commerce in a marketplace model directly between two people. Interestingly enough, I still tend to side with Fred's assessment of AirBnB's future. All my experiences with it as a user have been too unreliable to expect that it can scale to truly massive usability. Selling your old guit…
I've been out of the travel/hotel game for about 4 years now, but I worked in it on and off from ~'97 through to '07.
It's an industry ripe for a new player to do a Paypal style end run around the traditional banking/creditcard industry.
I don't know whether Airbnb are that player (I'm 100% sure pg and Fred are _much_ better judges of that then I am), but I'm also at least 99% sure that it _won't_ be any of the existing big players (Sabre, Gallileo, Pegasus, MyFideleo, Worldres were the large players I worked with) that revolutionise the hotel booking business.
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Just because people understand businessspeak doesn't mean it's good to use. You would know what I meant if I typed "teh" instead of "the", but we all try to write "the" anyway.
Every niche has it's own lingo. VC's that need to bring the above message across several times a day just don't want to come across as rude or worse. Therefore they use euphemisms of which the messages are perfectly understood by their peers and which leave them as much room as possible (eg. making it easier to come back later and say "finished data acquisition phase -- we are in"). Classic VC play. In the end, I can…
This would also not preclude, "you know, I was wrong... still interested in some cash?" It's a business transaction, not dating.