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Three of our worst VC stories

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Re: Three of our worst VC stories

#101

Post by AndrewKemendo »

anonym00se1 wrote: post #100
AndrewKemendo wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The (fun?) one that stands out the most were the Pittsburgh Angels (2013 probably) and they literally have a long round table that they dine at in a closed off room in this country club. They take like one or two pitches a month and tell you that they generally do 300-500k checks. I was invited and drove 3 hours. They then put you in a giant dining room with all the country club members eating dinner, with your own t…

They tell you to order whatever you want, then surprise you with a bill at the end?

I was also baffled

Re: Three of our worst VC stories

#103

Post by satvikpendem »

jviotti wrote: post #83
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

Nice, how's the revenue/profit? Seems hard to monetize.

Re: Three of our worst VC stories

#104

Post by satvikpendem »

root-parent wrote: post #81
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,…

Seems people downvoting don't understand your sardonicism lol

Re: Three of our worst VC stories

#106

Post by stackghost »

root-parent wrote: post #84
stackghost wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Sure but the act of actually securing VC funding is a small part of running a company. Those VCs are not going to recoup their investments if they pick people who optimize for funding and not for product vision and good leadership.

Re: Three of our worst VC stories

#109

Post by [deleted] »

pilingual wrote: post #86
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…

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.

[deleted]

Re: Three of our worst VC stories

#110

Post by bartread »

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.

I suppose one could argue that VCs develop a taste for it after speaking with so many founders.

But, of course, you often don’t find out what lay down the road not travelled, except for those companies that get funded elsewhere, so it’s not like there’s an obvious objective measure.

I can’t help wondering if it’s a bit like Moneyball though and, if you had good enough data that you could model it well enough, you’d discover a lot of that taste is just shooting bull and doesn’t amount to much. Possibly there’d be a lot of variability across VCs.

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