181–190 of 251 posts
I would estimate the chance of this startup actually finding a way to increase life span below 1%.
What are the chances of the average seed-funded web startup still being around in five years? Can't be much over 1%.
Also, this was a really great article and congrats to the author!
Interesting that she had a much easier time raising from men than women. She mentions having a CRM with 150+ investors, so presumably this isn't just random chance based on a small number of interactions. One possible reason is that men may have been actively looking to invest in female founders for diversity reasons. Female investors wouldn't feel the same pressure for gender diversity among their portfolio companie…
Women and Minorities Are Penalized for Promoting Diversity https://hbr.org/2016/03/women-and-minorities-are-penalized-f...
For a forum that requests scientific rigour for sometimes even the most trivial claims, HN really does let these affirmative posts get away without any scrutiny. No doubt ONLY because of fear of being labeled a racist/sexist/x-ist.
The blog post takes some very controversial claims and tries to pass it off as facts: - "We know that in the U.S., there is still a power and status gap between men and women and between whites and nonwhites." - the gap between men and women can and has been explained by choice of profession, seniority, temperamental differences. Same thing with nonwhites, if you're an immigrant from Mexico or a brother from the ghetto, for sure you'll have a harder time than Ivy league educated kid from the suburbs. It doesn't have to be sexism and racism respectively.
Now I'm just throwing sh*t against the wall and seeing what sticks, but maybe colleagues just don't appreciate when someone takes up work time with their social justice agendas instead of working. I recall several months ago there was a link to a blogpost suggesting that blacks are being ignored during meetings due to racism. OR, maybe they just happen to have nothing worthwhile to say? How do we know? How do we determine? It seems in the current political climate, we don't need to, with accusations of racism you're always guilty until proven innocent and it's up to you to prove it otherwise(good luck proving a negative). I know that a few times when I spoke up in meetings I was ignored. Why? Because on those occasions I had nothing of value to add, but maybe I should find an x-ism cause and write accusatory blogposts to champion it.
I'm not claiming that racism/sexism/unfair discrimination based on arbitrary features don't exist. They do. But sometimes you're not doing well not because you're discriminated, but because you're not good enough for one reason or another. Being accused of crimes one didn't commit and put into prison by a systemically corrupt institution - racism(true story too, happened to Allen Iverson). Not doing well at something? Maybe sometimes it's worth to examine what YOU can do instead of jumping to the racist/sexist card to absolve yourself of all personal responsibility for your failures.
>It’s a VC’s job to keep the door open. Many were ‘blown away’, then passed before the second meeting. This is normal. I'm sometimes working with US-Americans and not being US-American myself, I feel like this is also a US-cultural thing? In important meetings with US stakeholders I struggle to read the room because everything is always 'awesome' and 'amazing', there's rarely upfront criticism. Honest feedback has to…
Oh and it’s arguably unhealthy too.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yep. I'm from the US grew up in the Valley but lived in the UK for a startup for a short while. It's both a byproduct of career hierarchal corporate obedience and social success façade (see also: modern campus culture of Ivy Leagues and Pac12s). It's absolutely awful for mental health or getting things done. More practically, it's a problem when people try so hard to be liked that they throw away respect by being too…
> toxically-positive This! That term that describes perfectly my impression of many people from the U.S.A. It's maybe just a cultural thing, but I have a lot of trouble working together with people who have this sort of attitude.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yep. I'm from the US grew up in the Valley but lived in the UK for a startup for a short while. It's both a byproduct of career hierarchal corporate obedience and social success façade (see also: modern campus culture of Ivy Leagues and Pac12s). It's absolutely awful for mental health or getting things done. More practically, it's a problem when people try so hard to be liked that they throw away respect by being too…
> toxically-positive This! That term that describes perfectly my impression of many people from the U.S.A. It's maybe just a cultural thing, but I have a lot of trouble working together with people who have this sort of attitude.
I’m American but have mostly lived abroad for decades, and I still find his disorienting for the first few days of any trip back.
Would this have been possible outside of the Bay area? Is it possible to raise this amount of money for just an idea (a good idea from a knowledgeable founder, but no POC or traction) elsewhere in the US or anywhere in Europe? From what I understand the conventional wisdom is that only VCs from the Bay area will take this sort of bet and they will prefer the company to be located there. But much of what I've read on…
> I worked in venture capital for two years at a fund specializing in the area my Loyal is in (so I had a preexisting VC network, was seen as a bit of an ‘insider’, and the fund invested in Loyal, which was good signaling).
>It’s a VC’s job to keep the door open. Many were ‘blown away’, then passed before the second meeting. This is normal. I'm sometimes working with US-Americans and not being US-American myself, I feel like this is also a US-cultural thing? In important meetings with US stakeholders I struggle to read the room because everything is always 'awesome' and 'amazing', there's rarely upfront criticism. Honest feedback has to…
Everything is crap. By default. Almost everything is "not bad", "fine", or at best "pretty good". You will almost never hear a French person describe anything as "awesome", "great", "fantastic" or "brilliant" (unless they’ve spent too much time in the US or work in startup la la land).
But crap also is "not bad", "fine", or sometimes even "pretty good".
So, how does one tell the difference?
Easy! It’s all in the contemptuous tone, annoyed dismissive look, sneering smirk and distracted disdainful wave of the hand!
What a great culture to be born in.
>It’s a VC’s job to keep the door open. Many were ‘blown away’, then passed before the second meeting. This is normal. I'm sometimes working with US-Americans and not being US-American myself, I feel like this is also a US-cultural thing? In important meetings with US stakeholders I struggle to read the room because everything is always 'awesome' and 'amazing', there's rarely upfront criticism. Honest feedback has to…
Judge people by how many questions they have about the project rather than by what they say.
In a society programmed to respond "I'm good" to "How are you", you gotta stretch a bit. Maybe people like you will make the difference.
Best of luck in business.