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This hurts me.
When a meeting with a VC goes bad (Jobloft)
11–20 of 22 posts
Re: When a meeting with a VC goes bad (Jobloft)
#12200k for 50%? That's crazy.
The professor was right on so many levels. That 200K wouldn't last three to four months. Rent, salaries, hardware, etc.
That said, the professor was slightly insulting, but I don't think his position was wrong at all.
Re: When a meeting with a VC goes bad (Jobloft)
#13Poking around, I found http://www.jobloft.com/blog/2006/11/22/jobloftcom-the-suns-s... .. It's Jobloft's side of the story. Apparently the dragons wanted to invest $200,000 for 50% of the company. I have no idea if that's a good deal or not.
Structurally that is almost guaranteed to be a bad deal. I doubt you'd ever find a deal of this form in the history of a startup that went on to be successful. If an investor buys as much as half the company (it does happen in some series A rounds), the valuation should be higher. Investors might pay $200k for half a restaurant or some other business like that, but not a startup.
Yes I think the professor realised this -- he was one of the founders of lavalife IIRC.
I have seen the show and my observation was: The dragons are really mostly into funding sauce-makers, innovative clothing accessories, etc. and they apply the same principles to startups -- doesn't work well.
Re: When a meeting with a VC goes bad (Jobloft)
#14200k for 50%? That's crazy. The professor was right on so many levels. That 200K wouldn't last three to four months. Rent, salaries, hardware, etc. That said, the professor was slightly insulting, but I don't think his position was wrong at all.
I agree. What is more, the professor's show in the board room was so good that it made for highly entertaining TV. If you're going to turn down a $200k, you might as well get some free publicity out of it.
Re: When a meeting with a VC goes bad (Jobloft)
#15Poking around, I found http://www.jobloft.com/blog/2006/11/22/jobloftcom-the-suns-s... .. It's Jobloft's side of the story. Apparently the dragons wanted to invest $200,000 for 50% of the company. I have no idea if that's a good deal or not.
Now that makes a difference. I didn't like at all the way the professor behaved but I liked the fact the guys from jobloft stuck by their gut feeling.
Re: When a meeting with a VC goes bad (Jobloft)
#16I was also a pitcher/presenter on this show, and the "Dragons" were some of the nicest VC's I've met.
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Re: When a meeting with a VC goes bad (Jobloft)
#17'professor' comes across as a total dick to me.
If he thought the valuation was too low, why didn't he say that instead of insulting people and pissing them off.
Re: When a meeting with a VC goes bad (Jobloft)
#18The biggest problem is that this professor apparently didn't discuss how he thought the 200k was a bad deal beforehand with the founders. Or, if he had discussed it beforehand, the founders had decided it was still a deal they would like to proceed with.
Instead, he went ahead and torpedoed the deal without the founders consent. It certainly makes for good television, but I'd be pissed if I were one of the founders.
Re: When a meeting with a VC goes bad (Jobloft)
#19Fascinating little encounter. It continues to seem to me that ego, and all the slings and arrows that're attached, is the number one crusher of creativity.
Re: When a meeting with a VC goes bad (Jobloft)
#20The biggest problem is that this professor apparently didn't discuss how he thought the 200k was a bad deal beforehand with the founders. Or, if he had discussed it beforehand, the founders had decided it was still a deal they would like to proceed with. Instead, he went ahead and torpedoed the deal without the founders consent. It certainly makes for good television, but I'd be pissed if I were one of the founders.
Yeah, the source of the problem was that the founders and the professor were out of sync. If they agreed with him, they shouldn't have been in that meeting in the first place. If they disagreed with him, they should have stood up in the middle of his rant and told him to stop talking and leave the room.
As it happened, I guess it was uncomfortable for them to discuss, so this scene, which is just about the worst-case scenario, came to pass.