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I think you're being a bit tough at times but you definitely hit a vein. It's always funny when VCs give a talk like this because they will invariable mention

I think you're being a bit tough at times but you definitely hit a vein. It's always funny when VCs give a talk like this because they will invariable mention how they are down-to-earth ("been through the struggle") and how modern they are, when the truth is that they are anything but. Warm introduction? Really? Is this straight from an episode of Mad Men? They know very well that they could hire one or two people to take decks from cold sources and run a preliminary review. They don't do that because they want to perpetuate the system. It's an "old boys network" and there's a real effort made to keep it that way. Let me repeat that, the reason they will never get rid of the warm intro is that it's all about perpetuating the old boys network. Peter Thiel, when speaking to Stanford students, talked about vetting and said, without irony, that coming from Stanford gives you that vetted quality and that (IIRC)"you can give some song-and-dance about how your parents didn't have enough money so you had to go to UC Berkeley, but we all know that's not going to work." (Which is funny because my old roommate who went to UC Berkeley was mentioned in Perlmutter's 2011 Nobel speech; I wonder if he knows that he doesn't rate.) The difference between Cal and Stanford is about money and the perpetuation of wealth across generations, and that's also what we're talking about here: an old boys network. Professional CEO = crony. Nothing else. The tragic part of all of this is that there is serious innovation waiting to happen and the system that could support and enable it is instead too busy preserving and extending antiquated systems of power and wealth.

graycat 10y ago
> Professional CEO = crony. Nothing else .... Yup. The pro CEO totally owes his job and even his career, house mortgage, the mother in law addition, the in ground back yard pool, the kids' college tuition, new family SUV, wife's happiness, the family vacation home, his retirement, his good medical plan and dental plan, his airline travel card, his company car, country club membership, the respect of his circle of friends, etc. to the VCs. Then the BoD and CEO can agree on this and that and send the whole founding team out without even their shirts. The founding team can sue, but without even their shirts and against the money and power of the great company they built, they don't have a chance. So, we're talking CEO loyalty to the BoD, sit, lie down, roll over, stand, heel, etc. The VCs with the BoD are in a power struggle with the founders, and the ones with more power get more money; the one with enough power can get ALL the money. I omitted, the people I could get a "warm introduction" from are so high up in business and academics that the Silicon Valley VCs don't know them. And the Silicon Valley VCs don't know the people I know and couldn't get a warm introduction to me. E.g., in information technology, the people I respect and are able to respect me all have good appropriate Ph.D. degrees, usually pure/applied math, and nearly no Silicon Valley VCs do. To put it bluntly, the Silicon Valley VCs are "too low class" for me! Really, I don't care and am willing to give tutorials to people with poor technical prerequisites for my work, but the VCs wanting "warm introductions" look too arrogant to me. Or, I'm not going to go to one of my Ph.D. dissertation advisers, since then a Dean at one famous university and President of another, and ask for a "warm introduction" to a VC that likely does not know him.

graycat 10y ago

> Professional CEO = crony. Nothing else .... Yup. The pro CEO totally owes his job and even his career, house mortgage, the mother in law addition, the in ground back yard pool, the kids' college tuition, new family SUV, wife's happiness, the family vacation home, his retirement, his good medical plan and dental plan, his airline travel card, his company car, country club membership, the respect of his circle of friends, etc. to the VCs. Then the BoD and CEO can agree on this and that and send the whole founding team out without even their shirts. The founding team can sue, but without even their shirts and against the money and power of the great company they built, they don't have a chance. So, we're talking CEO loyalty to the BoD, sit, lie down, roll over, stand, heel, etc. The VCs with the BoD are in a power struggle with the founders, and the ones with more power get more money; the one with enough power can get ALL the money. I omitted, the people I could get a "warm introduction" from are so high up in business and academics that the Silicon Valley VCs don't know them. And the Silicon Valley VCs don't know the people I know and couldn't get a warm introduction to me. E.g., in information technology, the people I respect and are able to respect me all have good appropriate Ph.D. degrees, usually pure/applied math, and nearly no Silicon Valley VCs do. To put it bluntly, the Silicon Valley VCs are "too low class" for me! Really, I don't care and am willing to give tutorials to people with poor technical prerequisites for my work, but the VCs wanting "warm introductions" look too arrogant to me. Or, I'm not going to go to one of my Ph.D. dissertation advisers, since then a Dean at one famous university and President of another, and ask for a "warm introduction" to a VC that likely does not know him.