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Three of our worst VC stories

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Re: Three of our worst VC stories

#111

Post by satvikpendem »

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.)

What's the best highlight you've seen?

Re: Three of our worst VC stories

#113

Post by dang »

satvikpendem wrote: post #111
dang wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.)

What's the best highlight you've seen?

I have no memory for that sort of thing. I can't tell you the best movie I've seen or the best record I've heard or anything of that kind. Sorry!

I do think it would be fun to have an "i feel lucky"-style random selection of highlights.

Re: Three of our worst VC stories

#114

Post by lrvick »

I once had a VC ask to meet my founders and I for his morning breakfast at a run down diner in texas. So we fly out from Florida pitch deck in hand, and meet him at his booth.

We pull out the deck, he says "Do not need that. How many paying customers do you have?"

Given we were at MVP stage and were running a public sentiment analysis driven social media search engine using our published academic AI work (15 years ago) we said "None yet. The capital to build the paid portion of our product, which is popular, is why we are here."

As he eats his eggs he goes "Come back when you have a hundred or more paying customers" and sent us packing .

Not even a 5 minute interaction with people he asked to fly out to pitch him, and were not even allowed to pitch.

I expect rejection by default at an early stage, but that one was particularly mean.

It will forever remain my go to example of a meeting that could have been an email.

One excited investor we did find for another project ended up being the now famous con man "Michael Prozer" who got on who wants to marry a millionaire using forged bank records and proceeded to get actual capital based on this lie until he was arrested for fraud.

My opinion of VCs is still... recovering. The bar is in hell.

Re: Three of our worst VC stories

#115

Post by Frannky »

I started a new company with my cofounder 6 months ago. We focused on what people wanted, built a manual solution then automated it. We have 60% margins and a system ready to scale. We are thinking of avoiding investments. I am not sure if we are in a new moment in time where investments are something people do because of what used to be the best to do. And I am not saying avoid blitzscaling but do it without external capital. The hypothesis is that a small team, Claude Code subscriptions, apis and automation/code are enough to make it work via profit reinvested from sales. And it will be actually a competitive advantage because of removed costs, mostly from coordinating a lot of humans and having outside forces pulling in different directions.

Re: Three of our worst VC stories

#116

Post by lrvick »

Frannky wrote: post #115

I started a new company with my cofounder 6 months ago. We focused on what people wanted, built a manual solution then automated it. We have 60% margins and a system ready to scale. We are thinking of avoiding investments. I am not sure if we are in a new moment in time where investments are something people do because of what used to be the best to do. And I am not saying avoid blitzscaling but do it without externa…

Buy a few GPUs so you can skip the Claude subscription, and never have to worry about rate limits, privacy, or refusals. Will pay for itself with a small team in a few months.

I mostly work on custom from scratch Linux operating systems and packages across dozens of languages.

I do 100% of my AI work today using two AMD r9700 pro GPUs on a 10yo pc I pulled out of an old arcade machine.

AI subscriptions only make sense for people who cannot build a basic home computer.

Re: Three of our worst VC stories

#117

Post by satvikpendem »

dang wrote: post #113
satvikpendem wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the best highlight you've seen?

I have no memory for that sort of thing. I can't tell you the best movie I've seen or the best record I've heard or anything of that kind. Sorry! I do think it would be fun to have an "i feel lucky"-style random selection of highlights.

I did want to have a random link of a similar nature, hopefully that is interesting enough for HN! I made something similar via a browser HN link, very enlightening.

Re: Three of our worst VC stories

#118

Post by momojo »

lrvick wrote: post #116
Frannky wrote: post #115

I started a new company with my cofounder 6 months ago. We focused on what people wanted, built a manual solution then automated it. We have 60% margins and a system ready to scale. We are thinking of avoiding investments. I am not sure if we are in a new moment in time where investments are something people do because of what used to be the best to do. And I am not saying avoid blitzscaling but do it without externa…

Buy a few GPUs so you can skip the Claude subscription, and never have to worry about rate limits, privacy, or refusals. Will pay for itself with a small team in a few months. I mostly work on custom from scratch Linux operating systems and packages across dozens of languages. I do 100% of my AI work today using two AMD r9700 pro GPUs on a 10yo pc I pulled out of an old arcade machine. AI subscriptions only make sens…

How long has this been your daily driver? How has this setup worked for you compared to enterprise models? Which models?

Re: Three of our worst VC stories

#119

Post by keiferski »

lrvick wrote: post #114

I once had a VC ask to meet my founders and I for his morning breakfast at a run down diner in texas. So we fly out from Florida pitch deck in hand, and meet him at his booth. We pull out the deck, he says "Do not need that. How many paying customers do you have?" Given we were at MVP stage and were running a public sentiment analysis driven social media search engine using our published academic AI work (15 years ag…

At what point does this kind of groveling behavior actually become a negative signal, though?

If you’re willing to fly halfway across the country just to talk to a VC in a diner, it signals a lot of desperation IMO.

I haven’t had a ton of interactions with VCs; however, I have read innumerable books about the VC world, and a recurring theme is that VCs are competitive and don’t like being left out of a deal / losing a deal to another VC.

By willing to fly so far away for nothing, it signals that no other VC is interested.

Re: Three of our worst VC stories

#120

Post by simmschi »

lrvick wrote: post #114

I once had a VC ask to meet my founders and I for his morning breakfast at a run down diner in texas. So we fly out from Florida pitch deck in hand, and meet him at his booth. We pull out the deck, he says "Do not need that. How many paying customers do you have?" Given we were at MVP stage and were running a public sentiment analysis driven social media search engine using our published academic AI work (15 years ag…

So, how long did it take you to go 100 customers after this pitch?
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