Earlier quoted context omitted.
It might seem weird, but most VCs are fairly low-margin businesses day to day, then they either get a big payday or not (mostly not), once the fund starts to wind down. The odds of making it big as a general partner in a VC fund are not great. A VC has to live of management fees for the fund, which are a tiny fraction, typically half a percent, and that needs to cover both the initial investment process and all manag…
VC management fees are typically 2%/y. if a VC fund has $100 million in committed capital, the annual management fees would generally be between $2 million and $2.5 million. it's a lot of money.
VCs aren’t your friends
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Re: VCs aren’t your friends
#282Earlier quoted context omitted.
It might seem weird, but most VCs are fairly low-margin businesses day to day, then they either get a big payday or not (mostly not), once the fund starts to wind down. The odds of making it big as a general partner in a VC fund are not great. A VC has to live of management fees for the fund, which are a tiny fraction, typically half a percent, and that needs to cover both the initial investment process and all manag…
VC management fees are typically 2%/y. if a VC fund has $100 million in committed capital, the annual management fees would generally be between $2 million and $2.5 million. it's a lot of money.
On the other hand, a $100mm fund could be a 'contender' fund that wants to raise a large fund, and is in a competitive industry -- it's trying to get on the cap tables that, say, Mayfair gets on to, and so it needs to staff recruiting support, tech help, marketing people. Perhaps it's multi-jurisdiction. In that world, $2mm is way, way too little, and the GPs may well be financing the fund personally through fund 1 and into fund 2, depending on the follow-on raise. They are aiming at running, eventually, $1bn+ per fund in three to four stacked funds, and taking home $1bn after 20 years (or less?) of good effort for each of the original GPs.
These are caricatures, and there's much more than this to the lifecycle of venture funds, but since we're at HN and VC is a big part of the conversation, I think it's good for hackers and founders to understand the counterparties they do business with, and particularly to be able to read the signals of the VCs they talk to, while the VCs are reading the signals of a desperate, out of date deck.
Re: VCs aren’t your friends
#283Congrats, good for you! You learned something new or probably forget something that you taught yourself.
Re: VCs aren’t your friends
#284Earlier quoted context omitted.
Bankers with good PR. But for the first time founders out there please don't sweat it if you can't get funded for a long time, you may just be early. I gave up on a great idea (that my partner later worked into a great product within an existing company) because we were unable to get funded for 3 months. And later got VC funded after working on a worse idea for a year. It can take time, It may require you to get cust…
first time founders that have large followings in the community they are building for are the most fundable. Reason being, your first product or iteration will fail, but if you have a captive audience willing to try and give you feedback you're in the best position to achieve product market fit.
But I would say VCs usually prefer a team as its more likely to check all the boxes. I've heard 3 as the "optimum" for team resilience vs founding team social complexity, but that is just a general sentiment. If you have a community get a tech guy, if you are a techy get a product guy, if you are a product guy get a sales guy, etc. Don't try to be an ubermensch, just find a team you can work with.
Re: VCs aren’t your friends
#285Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Otherwise you're optimizing for criteria other than "selecting whether to invest in Apple or Uber. They arent single-mindedly optimizing to invest in the next apple or uber at all cost! They are balancing it against the need to screen out no-name bums that look and sound the same.
All I'm saying is that a "screen out the bums" heuristic is also a "screen out some of the wealthiest companies to ever exist" heuristic then it's probably not rooted in anything other than vibes.
If you can win a coin flip 51% of the time instead of 50, you have a viable business model.
Perfection isnt the goal.
Re: VCs aren’t your friends
#286The 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…
1. Legacies: this is the single biggest group of admitted students (eg ~36% of Harvard's undergraduate class). This by itself destroys any merit argument;
2. Athletes: people forget or don't know that the Ivy League is an athletics conference, despite the academic prestige and social proof. Ivy League schools don't offer true atheltics scholarships like you might get for D1 football recruits at, say, UAlabama or USC, but it is an important part of the admissions process;
3. The nebulous idea of "diversity". I don't mean in the DEI sense because it's much broader than that, like you can have better odds of getting an acceptance from an Ivy League school by simply coming from a low-population (and thus low applicant) state like Wyoming or Montana rather than Texas, California or New York;
4. Extra-curriculars, many of which are a proxy for wealth and privilege. For example, not everyone can do an unpaid internship living in NYC or LA or take unpaid opportunities requiring international travel;
5. Other random factors like filling out an orchestra. There's an old cliche that you should study the viola instead of the violin if you want to get into Harvard because there are fewer viola players.
6. Whether admissions believe you will enhance the reputation they've so carefully cultivated. An Ivy League degree is a powerful form of social proof. Being a Harvard grad will help you get into any graduate program. The prestige of your medical school greatly affects your ability to get a residency in a competitive specialty. The point is that social proof diminishes if the perception of your graduates turns sour so admissions will absolutely look at how may reflect on them in future.
The only commonality with VC funding seems to be the power of social proof. That is, MIT and Stanford grads will have an easier time. VC firms will go and do presentations and recruiting at those schools.
That doesn't mean you can't get funded if you went to an unremarkable state school. It just means it's a more difficult road. Stanford or MIT will make it easier to get an internship and thus a returning offer at a prestigious Big Tech company. You'll potentially know more of the people in the VC and startup spaces because you went to school with them or someone they know. There's a real network effect here.
But the point is the similarity to Ivy League recruiting seems to be fairly superficial.
Re: VCs aren’t your friends
#287Re: VCs aren’t your friends
#288Earlier quoted context omitted.
first time founders that have large followings in the community they are building for are the most fundable. Reason being, your first product or iteration will fail, but if you have a captive audience willing to try and give you feedback you're in the best position to achieve product market fit.
My career is focused on B2B so I don't know a lot about communities, but the sentiment is the same. You have an edge if you know a lot about a subject and have good connections with professionals in the field that are willing to talk to you. But I would say VCs usually prefer a team as its more likely to check all the boxes. I've heard 3 as the "optimum" for team resilience vs founding team social complexity, but tha…
Re: VCs aren’t your friends
#289Most business founders don’t need VC money and are worse off for taking VC money. I find the mindset “my pitch deck was 2 months old so I didn’t get funding” very out of touch of business realities. It is far more likely that that type of business doesn’t need VC funding. Your SaaS can probably be built with your daytime developer salary. No VC ever says “wow, what a great investment opportunity, one of the best, but…
As someone who took more than a year off to build his SaaS - the days of stitching together a prototype at night are pretty much over. You need to be an incredible hustler and have a really good insight into a desperate business need. Customers today expect polish and few bugs right out of the gate. I spent months on polish alone. If you don't, your product is going to be savaged like this: "Former Yahoo CEO Marissa…
That article follows a long standing tradition of women attacking other women in power based on appearance to try to elevate themselves. No insight on polishing trends can be learned here.
Re: VCs aren’t your friends
#290Earlier quoted context omitted.
Honestly, I would have too, if I were in that VC's place. Hindsight is everything obviously but at that moment, if a founder were to arrive to an important meeting 20 minutes late without good reason, either the meeting was of little importance to the founder, or the lack of punctuality speaks volumes of his dedication to his company and his potential partners. Dave McClure once told me that he passed on Travis Kalan…
If lack of punctuality being used as a signal causes these VCs to drop Steve Jobs or Travis Kalanick I think it's safe to say it doesn't speak volumes. Otherwise you're optimizing for criteria other than "selecting whether to invest in Apple or Uber."