VC isn't VC anymore

Can it please finish itself before it eats the table, chairs, and dishes?

The principle is simple. VCs are soccer stars, but founders play basketball.

Basketball and soccer share much in common. For instance, both involve teams dribbling, passing, and shooting a round ball. But successful abilities and traits in one may not translate to the other.

Think of each profession as a different sport. Venture, growth, and value investing all differ, and all differ from founding.

VCs are all driven and highly intelligent, but so are lawyers, bankers, and consultants. Talent isn't the issue.

Capital confers authority, but not expertise.

Based on resume alone, 80% of VCs would not earn board seats at their portfolio companies. Their experience and skills, much like consultants and value investors, were honed on a field different from the basketball arena where founders compete.

Here's a quick heuristic: sans capital, would you still hire the VC to sit on the board? If yes, wonderful.

This is no slight and works in reverse: 80% of founders would not earn the right to direct VC investments.

To clarify, great VCs are absolutely worth the premium and can reshape a startup's trajectory as all great advisors can. If you find a great VC, do not haggle. Strike a deal, and return to building.

The greatest VCs exhibit the same pattern, understanding their role on the startup team as advisors, not alphas. They are often understated and work tirelessly on behalf of their clients.

The worst VCs exhibit the inverse pattern and imagine themselves as the alpha, not appreciating how a talented peer could have replaced them without changing the exit. They are loud on social media and assume accomplishments from finance or FAANG map to the startup arena. These VCs should run funds on Wall Street, not advise founders in Silicon Valley.

How do we highlight good VCs without attacking bad ones? Many good VCs, as with many good advisors, prefer subdued profiles and dislike self-promotion. This is the challenge.

The original idea was to flag bad VCs, but such a system grants founders too much power to levy unjust charges and settle feuds.

After all, many disputes are legitimate and reflect bad founders. Founders, like all professionals, sit on a spectrum. The surge of big money has spawned plenty of bad ones who, sadly enough, do not represent the best of tech and innovation but rather greed and self-aggrandizement.

The Pincus post sparked a cleaner iteration.

The proposal is a public page/spreadsheet where only founders can post, only after an outcome or a certain number of years, and only with affirmative assessments. Nothing negative, nothing anonymous. Posts must certify no quid pro quo or other VC prodding.

Topics could include responsiveness, support during dark days, absence of alpha syndrome, and other key considerations.

Over time, good VCs should reveal a clear pattern and attract new founders: founders trusting them again with repeat business and consistent high marks across the portfolio, not only unicorns. Arguably, the strongest signal will radiate from the worst outcomes.

Critically, this system won't incite mob justice or expose VCs to unfair accusations, but can still suggest who to diligence more deeply.

The purpose is to spotlight good VCs who advance innovation and startups over time, letting their body of work rise to the top and garner proper recognition.

Of course, it penalizes newer investors and is vulnerable to gaming like any system, but it plugs a small gap. Founders want to find good investors based on data, but good investors dislike boasting.

The issues raised in this article are very real but even aside from that, you end up enabling a class of zombie companies that have no pressure to succeed. Their founders raise and end up as advisors and LPs themselves eventually while employees at these companies receive equity that will never be liquid and will rarely be worth anything. At best the equity in these companies will be realized at steep discounts as the lack of liquid markets makes it very easy for private companies to claim that a company was valued at a certain amount at a certain time with scant certainty of what happens next. Companies stay unprofitable and private for decades, relying on private markets to stay solvent.

Pre-GFC plenty of undisciplined, unprofitable companies would IPO. While some did take public money then eventually go under, most just made their underwriters lose money. With pressure to trade publicly and put sunshine on company books, losers lost and winners won.

The result is a K-shaped economy. Private capital appreciates on paper and private capital holders take out loans on the inflated value of their equities. Meanwhile public markets are more discriminating and fiscally tight by necessity. A private company may eventually go under but cheap loans collateralized on private capital may be paid back before there's any financial reckoning.

Duh.

> That you wanted to gamble on that

What makes you think I gambled at all?