VCs aren’t your friends • Hacker News Board

Re: VCs aren’t your friends

#21

Post by keiferski » Thu, May 16, 2024, 6:55 AM UTC

The way VCs filter out potential investments seems fairly similar to the way Ivy League schools filter out potential students. (Probably because they are comprised of the same people.) It is not really about technical brilliance, or innovation, or anything that is written on their website as a core value. It's more about whether you're smart enough and can follow instructions and fit into the overarching institutional structure of school and work.

For companies that are at the point of raising venture capital, this might be what is actually needed. But it certainly seems like it filters out a lot of the more idiosyncratic, brilliant types that aren't concerned with (from their perspective, irrelevant) details, like the date on a pitch deck. It seems like a good way to get institutional operators, not rare but not-quite-conformist innovators. I can't imagine someone like Steve Jobs or Nikola Tesla passing these VC/Ivy League kinds of tests.

Re: VCs aren’t your friends

#22

Post by jrflowers » Thu, May 16, 2024, 6:55 AM UTC

I love this blog post about why Jason Lemkin’s post about passing on a pitch because the pitch deck said March instead of May is a good and normal post. Without this informative content we would not know that Jason Lemkin‘s post was not at all off putting or ridiculous, and we are rightfully brought up to speed on how cool it was, in fact.

Re: VCs aren’t your friends

#23

Post by earnesti » Thu, May 16, 2024, 6:56 AM UTC

throwaway42668 wrote: post #18

The problem with the “signal” is that it’s based on pretty much nothing. It is just as valid or nuts as any other ad hoc random tea leaves & chicken bones “signal” someone decides to come up with a dubious justification for. Whether the deck said March, April, or May changed absolutely nothing about the underlying business and thus also nothing about the actual investment opportunity. Maybe they made the deck two mon…

The deck from March says that they have been sending the deck around since March, and are still looking for investments. It might be meaningful, but would have to measure how quickly the typical funding rounds are made for successful companies, to have an "academic" argument about it. However it doesn't really matter, a VC can invest for whatever reasons he wants.

Re: VCs aren’t your friends

#24

Post by anonzzzies » Thu, May 16, 2024, 6:56 AM UTC

We had a vc that was my friend; not anymore; we failed and he felt betrayed we ‘gave up so easily’ (we didn’t). I guess a better one is; VCs should not be your friends.

Re: VCs aren’t your friends

#25

Post by juped » Thu, May 16, 2024, 6:56 AM UTC

throwaway42668 wrote: post #18

The problem with the “signal” is that it’s based on pretty much nothing. It is just as valid or nuts as any other ad hoc random tea leaves & chicken bones “signal” someone decides to come up with a dubious justification for. Whether the deck said March, April, or May changed absolutely nothing about the underlying business and thus also nothing about the actual investment opportunity. Maybe they made the deck two mon…

Sure, they'd be better off just using a good source of randomness to pick the lucky ones, because then they wouldn't be self-deluding about having special insight.

Re: VCs aren’t your friends

#26

Post by smabie » Thu, May 16, 2024, 7:03 AM UTC

keiferski wrote: post #21

The way VCs filter out potential investments seems fairly similar to the way Ivy League schools filter out potential students. (Probably because they are comprised of the same people.) It is not really about technical brilliance, or innovation, or anything that is written on their website as a core value. It's more about whether you're smart enough and can follow instructions and fit into the overarching institutiona…

If you're brilliant and idiosyncratic and delivering something truly compelling, then vcs are more than happy to look past these things. God knows how many very eccentric founders have received funding

Re: VCs aren’t your friends

#27

Post by reducesuffering » Thu, May 16, 2024, 7:03 AM UTC

moralestapia wrote: post #19

billybones wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn’t read this as “10% will become 100B businesses”, I read this as “10% are hot”—probably the author meant “like a team out of OAI” but maybe they meant “like recent rounds of OAI have been”. In any case this post read as sophisticated, reasonable, and helpful, to me.

It's orders of magnitude off. The guy is just LARPing poorly, even lacking common sense. One single OpenAI-tier deal every two years, consistently, would put you into Legendary VC territory.

What a colossal failure of OpenAI’s nonprofit charter that they’re repeatedly in a conversation about being good VC returns.

Re: VCs aren’t your friends

#28

Post by max_ » Thu, May 16, 2024, 7:04 AM UTC

keiferski wrote: post #21

The way VCs filter out potential investments seems fairly similar to the way Ivy League schools filter out potential students. (Probably because they are comprised of the same people.) It is not really about technical brilliance, or innovation, or anything that is written on their website as a core value. It's more about whether you're smart enough and can follow instructions and fit into the overarching institutiona…

VCs like Don Valentine & The founder of Atari actually passed on Steve Jobs because "they were not impressive".

It was only after Steve Jobs exploited their preferential attachment & tendency of VC to succumb to herding effects that he was given investment.

Re: VCs aren’t your friends

#29

Post by max_ » Thu, May 16, 2024, 7:06 AM UTC

smabie wrote: post #26

keiferski wrote: post #21

The way VCs filter out potential investments seems fairly similar to the way Ivy League schools filter out potential students. (Probably because they are comprised of the same people.) It is not really about technical brilliance, or innovation, or anything that is written on their website as a core value. It's more about whether you're smart enough and can follow instructions and fit into the overarching institutiona…

If you're brilliant and idiosyncratic and delivering something truly compelling, then vcs are more than happy to look past these things. God knows how many very eccentric founders have received funding

It is impossible for something in very early stages, that needs money to be "truly compelling".

For VCs a compelling product means great traction but to get great traction you need initial funding so it's always a catch 22.

Re: VCs aren’t your friends

#30

Post by dmurray » Thu, May 16, 2024, 7:10 AM UTC

keiferski wrote: post #21

The way VCs filter out potential investments seems fairly similar to the way Ivy League schools filter out potential students. (Probably because they are comprised of the same people.) It is not really about technical brilliance, or innovation, or anything that is written on their website as a core value. It's more about whether you're smart enough and can follow instructions and fit into the overarching institutiona…

I'd say Jobs would have blown them away. He was a businessman and an obsessive who knew when to focus on the design versus the product versus the money. If investors in his era wanted a perfect pitch deck, his pitch deck would have been perfect.

Tesla might have been more likely to focus on having the tech working at the expense of everything else.