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Three of our worst VC stories

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Re: Three of our worst VC stories

#141

Post by InsideOutSanta »

tty456 wrote: post #72
malshe wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone asked him this down the thread. He replied that it was said to him. So it’s a first party account.

It's interesting he provides quotes for the other stories, but not this one. And still doesn't in the thread. Again, i'm not debating the authenticity, but is it possible he's inferring that based on something not-so-explicit being said? I'd love to see/hear the words that people actually say when I hear stories like "they said they wouldn't [invest/buy/etc] from me because i'm a woman".

When I studied comp sci in the early 00s, a prof just flat out told us in a male-only class that women had no place in comp sci. I'm not at all surprised that shitty men are open about their thoughts on women when they assume that they are talking to people who agree with them.

Re: Three of our worst VC stories

#142

Post by bombcar »

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 more common than people may realize; I know two cases I was personally involved in where a VC went to bat and “did right” - it’s just not talked about much, as it’s not a terribly interesting story.

Re: Three of our worst VC stories

#143

Post by dang »

nailer wrote: post #137
dang wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, I see. I actually originally posted the x.com links but plenty of HN users can't read Twitter threads that way, so we usually try to provide a readable alternative. (Plus this helps to reduce offtopic complaints in threads.) You'll therefore often see both a twitter/x link and the corresponding xcancel link in toptext - like in these recent examples: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48317774 https://news.ycom…

> HN users can't read Twitter threads that way This doesn’t seem correct. I can view all of these without a Twitter login. Compare this with nytimes, where a login is required but we still always post the canonical URL per the guideline. > Plus this helps to reduce offtopic complaints in threads. That can be a fixed with moderation and bans.

That's why I said "threads". As far as I understand it, logged-out users can see the initial tweet at a link, but not the replies.

> That can be a fixed with moderation and bans.

That is an excessive view of what can be done with hard power!

Re: Three of our worst VC stories

#144

Post by tptacek »

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.

That's not true. The best record you've heard is Television's Marquee Moon.

Re: Three of our worst VC stories

#145

Post by dang »

tptacek wrote: post #144
dang wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's not true. The best record you've heard is Television's Marquee Moon.

It is a hell of a record.

Re: Three of our worst VC stories

#146

Post by sharts »

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 do the self hosted models compare in terms of foundational ones? Say comparing to opus 4.8 1M, etc?

Re: Three of our worst VC stories

#147

Post by sharts »

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…

Why is that mean? It seems prudent for any investor to invest based on real metrics.

What’s probably dumb is that none of those questions/concerns were brought up ahead of time (by either side).

Re: Three of our worst VC stories

#148

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

Our_Benefactors wrote: post #99
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #61

After reading some of these stories, I don't see how you can't come away thinking that psychopathy is a trait that goes hand in hand with being a successful VC. The story about Vinod Khosla speaks for itself, but after reading #2 I clicked on Marc Andreesen's twitter profile, which currently says this: > You’re not talking to someone who woke up a loser. That loser attitude, that loser premise makes no sense to me. T…

This quote is from a viral interview between Jensen Huang and Dwarkesh Patel, the latter made some points during the interview that were very condescending and betrayed a deep misunderstanding of technology.

Thanks, I wasn't aware of the original source.

FWIW, while I think the comment makes much more sense in the context of that original video, I don't think Huang is making particularly good points in that interview. Like I thought the analogy with enriched uranium was a pretty good one, and at the very least Patel made exceedingly clear which points are analogous: namely, that it was powerful tech that had both civilian and military uses. That seems like a very fair discussion point when it comes to powerful chips. And Huang's response is just "Hey - that's a bad analogy", but I think his defense of it being a bad analogy is a poor one. Plus, I think it's false to say that Patel "betrayed a deep misunderstanding of technology" given that one quote he gave about why it would be a bad idea to sell advanced chips to China came from Dario Amodei of all people. I'm quite positive Amodei doesn't have "a deep misunderstanding of technology".

But back to the original topic, I still think it's beyond douchebaggery to make that quote your header in your Twitter bio, but it also fits with literally everything else I've heard from Andreessen to confirm to me he's far to the right on the psychopathy (i.e. "lacks empathy") spectrum. He's constantly dividing the world up into "winners" and "losers", and being a billionaire he's obviously a "winner", and if you propose any changes to society or regulations that would help lessen the naturally wealth-concentrating effects of technology then you're obviously a "loser".

Re: Three of our worst VC stories

#149

Post by julianlam »

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…

> enough to make it work via profit reinvested from sales.

Yes, this is just called running a business.

Re: Three of our worst VC stories

#150

Post by weitendorf »

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…

This is what I’ve been doing. I’m not even against external funding, I just see it as instrumental to the ultimate goal of building a sustainable business. Venture capital is basically a super high interest loan so it’s only something you want to take when and where it can be effectively deployed.

Most other founders/business owners and investors I know don’t see that as a controversial statement (that it makes no sense to see access to capital through a scarcity mindset, when it is factually accessible) but because most customers or potential employers aren’t one of those, it’s been a problem because this isn’t what you’re “supposed to do” and so they read into it from a social/legitimacy angle.

Regardless, it’s quite rewarding IMO and I highly suggest it to people with the means to pursue that path. I don’t see why people get so worked up on the whole VC thing, at the end of the day it’s just lending. Having dabbled in angel investing on the end you get a lot of people lining up for what they clearly perceive as unsecured loans or a social signal and on the other so many people get caught up in the dynamic of dangling said unsecured loans (when I first started it felt like some of the investors reaching out to me were just doing it to boss me around or something, like sir you can clearly see I started this two months ago and you dm’d me on LinkedIn to chat, I don’t need your money).

IMO most good founders/investors are credibility-maxxing but because of the social dynamics and moral hazards inherent with spending OPM you get weird other behavior

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