Analyzing pitches to find what gets VCs interested in a meeting • Hacker News Board

Re: Analyzing pitches to find what gets VCs interested in a meeting

#61

Post by spekcular » Tue, May 05, 2020, 1:58 AM UTC

racecondition wrote: post #37

wpietri wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100% agreed. Most VC funds are necessarily good at very specific skill: convincing people who control lots of money that the VC is smarter and better than their competitors. The easiest way to sell that is to truly believe it, and then perform that belief convincingly. That's not something one switches on and off, so their answers here are likely to be skewed in the direction of things that make them look valuable. T…

In general I agree with you, but I would say that alot of VCs either 1) diversify their investments amongst many areas in tech (or maybe some non tech things, not stereotyping all VCS but for this example I'll say diversity of problems being solved using technology/software etc) and thus see commonalities of problems amongst teams in their experience despite whatever the specific niche industry is. I think it is pret…

Could you please give a link to the blog post? I'd be interested in reading it.

Re: Analyzing pitches to find what gets VCs interested in a meeting

#62

Post by haltingproblem » Tue, May 05, 2020, 5:39 AM UTC

Humans choose first, rationalize later. Humans are bad at explaining why they made their choices but they have a narrative.

VCs are no different. The survey would need to be far more rigorously designed to correct for those tendencies and I dont even know if it can be done.

Re: Analyzing pitches to find what gets VCs interested in a meeting

#63

Post by racecondition » Tue, May 05, 2020, 5:43 AM UTC

wpietri wrote: post #60

racecondition wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you could say that about anyone.

I really couldn't. E.g., I've hired a number of programmers who are terrible at self-promotion. And even many of the ones who are good at it talk about specific, verifiable, repeatable skills.

yeh I guess nerds are an exception to the rule, but honestly relative to all of the industries out there outside of engineering alot of business, marketing, etc etc is fluff. VCs are in business and finance.

At the end of the day, they have money. Assume they are selfish and want to not lose money, so they probably have some rationale on which they give out money in hopes for a return on investment. That being said, I've seen way too many tech bros with bad blockchain ideas get way too much money which usually goes straight to their heads before they lose it all, and I assume the V.C.s have a really good strike price and know exactly when to liquidate.

For others, it was my general understanding VCs lose money on most investments, hoping that a few end up going really big and canceling out the losses on the rest, but I don't really know anything about VC stuff. I'm not sadomasochistic enough to try to start a company, I just try to work on my skills and people are willing to pay me to invest in myself because I tend to discover interesting things while I tinker about and also keep things from failing often in a raging dumpster fire but I don't know if thats a good way to market my skills.

Re: Analyzing pitches to find what gets VCs interested in a meeting

#64

Post by wpietri » Tue, May 05, 2020, 6:03 AM UTC

racecondition wrote: post #63

wpietri wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really couldn't. E.g., I've hired a number of programmers who are terrible at self-promotion. And even many of the ones who are good at it talk about specific, verifiable, repeatable skills.

yeh I guess nerds are an exception to the rule, but honestly relative to all of the industries out there outside of engineering alot of business, marketing, etc etc is fluff. VCs are in business and finance. At the end of the day, they have money. Assume they are selfish and want to not lose money, so they probably have some rationale on which they give out money in hopes for a return on investment. That being said,…

Nerds are not the only exception by far. Quite a lot of people making an honest living are reasonably honest. The people at my corner store are not going to BS me about what's in stock. The person cutting my hair has always been frank about what she's good at and what she's not. I've worked in a library, a restaurant, and a few factories; all were populated by people who were generally straightforward.

It's a relatively small percentage of jobs that require people to be good at manipulating the opinions of others. As you say, marketing is an exception to that, but their business is manipulation, so that's not surprising.

Re: Analyzing pitches to find what gets VCs interested in a meeting

#65

Post by redis_mlc » Tue, May 05, 2020, 8:56 AM UTC

quezzle wrote: post #7

I thought VCs were interested in companies with superstar teams with a killer idea, an established and lucrative monetization mechanism, an established defendable innovative product, in a global market with hockey stock growth and for some reason still willing to sign ridiculously unfavorable investment terms with no downside or risk for the VC at a very low price, but at a very high price to the next round of invest…

You forgot the 3x liquidation preference.

Re: Analyzing pitches to find what gets VCs interested in a meeting

#66

Post by racecondition » Thu, May 07, 2020, 11:55 PM UTC

wpietri wrote: post #64

racecondition wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yeh I guess nerds are an exception to the rule, but honestly relative to all of the industries out there outside of engineering alot of business, marketing, etc etc is fluff. VCs are in business and finance. At the end of the day, they have money. Assume they are selfish and want to not lose money, so they probably have some rationale on which they give out money in hopes for a return on investment. That being said,…

Nerds are not the only exception by far. Quite a lot of people making an honest living are reasonably honest. The people at my corner store are not going to BS me about what's in stock. The person cutting my hair has always been frank about what she's good at and what she's not. I've worked in a library, a restaurant, and a few factories; all were populated by people who were generally straightforward. It's a relativ…

marketing, finance, ad tech. My point is most fields propogated by modern technology is propped up by VC and finance...

I have friends in healthcare as well, and I don't hear things are much better too, in regards to the business ethics of the healthcare system.

My overarching point is that anything that involves finance is likely to be corrupt, and VCs are just one segment of them, but there are a lot of more corrupt financial entities with way less transparency and as a result, way less criticism.

It's not really a fair comparison to match factory work, cutting hair, and being a cashier to being a hero of honesty in relation to finance related jobs. Take cashiers for example, their job is to accurately ring up listed prices decided by a much more complex decision making system, leaving very little decisions for them to mess up at that point, and anything they do unhonestly, is likely to be relatively black and white in comparison to the unethical lobbying behaviors multi billion dollar corporations that bankrupt farmers that farm the seeds they make to monopolize food markets, that the cashiers are ringing up.

Yes, VCs are able to lose alot of money and not really be accountable for it, but so are many other industries related to finance...

Not sure why you are so convinced VCs are the one evil entity in the thousands of permutations of finance, but if I had to call out evil entities in finance it would be the credit market, corrupt government, wallstreet investors, but atleast somewhere at some point VCs gave value to some entity you can track other than transiently through a stock from an algorithm to maximise their profits, but I get it, you hate VCs.