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> Well considering the 50K is basically a rounding error to most VCs the money is not an issue. Given the difficulty of assembling a world class team to let one

> Well considering the 50K is basically a rounding error to most VCs the money is not an issue. Given the difficulty of assembling a world class team to let one disintegrate just because their current idea is poor is not a good use of a limited resource. You do not seem to understand how fund management works in the real world. A venture firm simply cannot deploy a nine-figure fund by writing $50,000 checks to keep on ice every entrepreneur it thinks has potential. Furthermore, I don't see how you can conclude that founders who thought it was a good idea to "lock customers into discount rates that even with infinite retention won’t become profitable" represents a world-class team. The post-failure behavior of one of the Homejoy co-founders[1] is even more damning. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10468700 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10468700

danieltillett 11y ago
VCs don’t have to lock up every entrepreneur, just those they think are world class with a bad idea. If the team truly is world class then they should be as rare as unicorns. To let a world-class team explode over just because they had a bad idea is silly if 50K would keep them going until they came up with a good idea. I don’t think the team at Homejoy was world class, but I also didn’t back them. We have to assume that the VCs that did back them thought they were a world class team or else they would not have given them the money they did. I am more lenient towards delusional founders (especially young ones) than delusional VCs. The team at Homejoy would have done very little damage if they had not been backed.