Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Three of our worst VC stories

twitter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 170 posts

Re: Three of our worst VC stories

#81

Post by root-parent »

satvikpendem wrote: post #49

More and more I see why bootstrapping is the way to go. And especially in this SaaSpocalypse with AI companies commoditizing entire companies with new feature releases like Claude Design or Codex for legal, it's better to just run your little corner of the Internet and make sustainable money over hyperscaling with millions and billions and being put out of business the next week. One might say why bootstrappers won't…

>> More and more I see why bootstrapping is the way to go.

That does not match the definition of success here...the trick is to become a billionaire and call yourself an entrepreneur without ever turning a profit.... :-)

Then keep getting acquired, become a VC, do the same on and on.

Clouflare is an example as a loss making company, every single Musk company with the exception of his state subsided Tesla, Epic Games, Snap, DoorDash, WeWork, Rivian, Lucid, Peloton, Roblox, Wayfair, Lyft, Reddit, ...

Being a real business, and turning a profit, is very, very hard, you have Google, Amazon and a infinitesimal few...

Re: Three of our worst VC stories

#82

Post by recursive »

stackghost wrote: post #59
root-parent wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If one partner is the core of the company, and the others the VC thinks are useless ( I am not saying in this case they were...just that the VC might have that perception) what should the VC do? After all its just business decisions like Cloudflare recent layoffs no? https://blog.cloudflare.com/building-for-the-future/

If they truly are useless that's one thing, but the ability to "impress" some asshole in a 30 minute pitch has little to do with running a successful tech company. With what authority are VCs claiming to be capable of being an accurate judge of talent or character in less than an hour? Sounds like said VC in your example is doing insufficient due diligence and just investing based on vibes.

They have superior taste of course.

Re: Three of our worst VC stories

#83

Post by jviotti »

satvikpendem wrote: post #49

More and more I see why bootstrapping is the way to go. And especially in this SaaSpocalypse with AI companies commoditizing entire companies with new feature releases like Claude Design or Codex for legal, it's better to just run your little corner of the Internet and make sustainable money over hyperscaling with millions and billions and being put out of business the next week. One might say why bootstrappers won't…

This. Here is my bootstrapped niche corner of the internet: https://www.sourcemeta.com

Re: Three of our worst VC stories

#84

Post by root-parent »

stackghost wrote: post #59
root-parent wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If one partner is the core of the company, and the others the VC thinks are useless ( I am not saying in this case they were...just that the VC might have that perception) what should the VC do? After all its just business decisions like Cloudflare recent layoffs no? https://blog.cloudflare.com/building-for-the-future/

If they truly are useless that's one thing, but the ability to "impress" some asshole in a 30 minute pitch has little to do with running a successful tech company. With what authority are VCs claiming to be capable of being an accurate judge of talent or character in less than an hour? Sounds like said VC in your example is doing insufficient due diligence and just investing based on vibes.

>> the ability to "impress" some asshole in a 30 minute pitch has little to do with running a successful tech company.

Judging by the stories being shared here, that is all it takes to get funded...

Re: Three of our worst VC stories

#85

Post by Hammershaft »

trumpdong wrote: post #22
stevepotter wrote: post #2

All I ever hear are horror stories. Can someone tell me a good story about VC that isn't Facebook or something?

The best possible case is that you get a cash infusion now in exchange for giving up a huge percentage of your future revenue and control of the company.

I mean the goal is that the money invested increases the value of the company so that the founder's reduced stake is worth considerably more than the founder's full stake of the counterfactual company where he didn't take VC money. VCs can be strongly positive sum.

Re: Three of our worst VC stories

#86

Post by pilingual »

mitchellh wrote: post #11
stevepotter wrote: post #2

All I ever hear are horror stories. Can someone tell me a good story about VC that isn't Facebook or something?

As with all things, the horror stories just get the most attention. People love to rage. There are plenty of boring (good, even!) VCs out there. They just work more quietly, professionally. I'll share a story, but its about a close friend and not me so I won't name any explicit actors and I'm going to round out the numbers. You either trust me or you don't, but this is a very direct relationship I have to both the fo…

Could you ask the VC if you could name them in the story?

It's unfortunate that some VCs I respected turned out to repeatedly have their reputation tarnished by such negative stories. I'm not sure what compels founders and VCs to be polarizing and not diplomatic like the old days.

Re: Three of our worst VC stories

#87

Post by dang »

mitchellh wrote: post #11
stevepotter wrote: post #2

All I ever hear are horror stories. Can someone tell me a good story about VC that isn't Facebook or something?

As with all things, the horror stories just get the most attention. People love to rage. There are plenty of boring (good, even!) VCs out there. They just work more quietly, professionally. I'll share a story, but its about a close friend and not me so I won't name any explicit actors and I'm going to round out the numbers. You either trust me or you don't, but this is a very direct relationship I have to both the fo…

This is one for https://news.ycombinator.com/highlights!

(I mention this so more people can know the list exists, and hopefully email hn@ycombinator.com when they see comments we should add.)

Re: Three of our worst VC stories

#88

Post by owenthejumper »

camel_gopher wrote: post #17

Next up, one of our worst CEO stories

There was once a CEO who built a great company, then decided to fire 20 % of the company and call those people publicly "measurers", so they are basically tainted in the marketplace. Oh wait...that was eastdakota

Re: Three of our worst VC stories

#89

Post by dang »

k099 wrote: post #45
swyx wrote: post #3

theres always a story behind the story. wondering why he chose today to say these

Greg Isenberg's viral tweet about VC that fell asleep during a pitch kicked off a bunch of other tweets about weird VC experiences this week: https://x.com/gregisenberg/status/2061794787825479818 Some QTs: https://x.com/dunkhippo33/status/2062768969560510486 https://x.com/typesfast/status/2062791307094048937 https://x.com/awxjack/status/2062605286683336757 https://x.com/travisk/status/2062224472426365045 https://x.co…

Oh thanks! I'll add these to the toptext.

Re: Three of our worst VC stories

#90

Post by [deleted] »

dang wrote: post #87
mitchellh wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As with all things, the horror stories just get the most attention. People love to rage. There are plenty of boring (good, even!) VCs out there. They just work more quietly, professionally. I'll share a story, but its about a close friend and not me so I won't name any explicit actors and I'm going to round out the numbers. You either trust me or you don't, but this is a very direct relationship I have to both the fo…

This is one for https://news.ycombinator.com/highlights ! (I mention this so more people can know the list exists, and hopefully email hn@ycombinator.com when they see comments we should add.)

[deleted]
Post reply on HN