4 ms·

> If I am successful, then I will have a long track record here on HN saying to the VCs "I told you so." or "You ignored me until I had revenue enough to ignore

> If I am successful, then I will have a long track record here on HN saying to the VCs "I told you so." or "You ignored me until I had revenue enough to ignore you." Okay, if an I-told-you-so is your long game then fine. But here's the problem: all these words are absolutely meaningless outside your private context. From our perspective it is utterly indistinguishable from a crackpot rant. You have this major axe to grind with VCs, I don't judge that (have plenty of sour grapes myself), but what are you to gain from publishing an inscrutable diatribe? Ever hear the expression "living well is the best revenge?" It sure as hell is better than confirming their decision not to invest in you by making yourself look crazy.

graycat 9y ago
You are angry about something. You are angry with me about something, but you have no reason to be. At https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15624067 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15624067 is the thread > Our Odd Startup: 3½ Guys, No VC, Profitability, and Patience and I responded with > My Odd Startup! > One guy, no VC, patience, problem identified, for solution, crucial secret sauce found and scalable, production quality code written, alpha test in progress, meager burn rate, no users or revenue yet. that is, I responded in kind, and you got angry. So, you post a list of unjustified, pejorative remarks about my behavior: > play coy > flog dissatisfaction > throw out outrageous > rile people up Then you posted > Microsoft's frankly very irritating old developer tools. That's uninformed: You must have in mind Microsoft's old Visual Basic, not Visual Basic .NET. Look, in case it is not fully clear yet, at their Web sites US information technology VCs, apparently nearly all of them, are seriously, deliberately, and harmfully deceiving entrepreneurs. Hacker News readers should be aware of this fact. The situation is not particular to me but to nearly every entrepreneur in the world who visits the Web sites. Here is their deception: They claim to fund information technology entrepreneurs and list their criteria. But their lists are deliberately deceptive because they refuse to list the most important parts of their criteria. Here are five items, apparently important to crucial, of their criteria they refuse to list: (1) Likely and apparently, the most important item of their criteria is that the entrepreneur's project must have traction or revenue or earnings significant and growing rapidly. (2) Likely and apparently, one item of their criteria is that they regard any contact directly by an entrepreneur as "from over the transom" (there is some scatological symbolism here) and refuse to consider it. (3) Likely and apparently, they nearly always insist on a "team" of several persons and will automatically reject a sole founder. (4) They want an entrepreneur to have "references". But having references from CEOs of Fortune 500 companies and Presidents of some of the world's best research universities don't count. (5) They claim to want highly qualified entrepreneurs, but the qualifications they want would not help a person get admitted to a STEM field Ph.D. program, be hired for a tenure track position in a STEM field at a research university, etc. And peer reviewed published papers in a STEM field and relevant to the entrepreneur's company don't count, either. Of these five, likely the most important is the first one, traction. E.g., I posted the statement from venture firm USV: > If you’re a founder or potential founder building something transformational, I’m so eager to meet you. I’m on a new adventure and I’m ready to dive into yours, too. You can reach me at Rebecca@USV.com. So, here she says "potential founder" implying that she wants to hear from persons, including single persons and not necessarily a team, who are not yet founders. So, they won't yet have traction, etc. She says "building" and not "have built". So she is considering work in progress. Then she says: "I’m so eager to meet you." I can't believe that. So, I wrote her. Never heard back anything. Her statement is just an example of the theme: VCs won't say what their real criteria are, and this is clearly both deceptive and deliberate. Entrepreneurs are being hurt because they take the VC bait and invest time and effort in responding for no good reason. Again, here is how this VC deliberate deception hurts entrepreneurs: VCs don't want to say this, but entrepreneurs need to know it or do what I did -- jerk the chains of nearly every VC on both US coasts with pitches of every style all for no good reason. Again, that VCs want traction is, thus, a fairly solid conclusion and really important for entrepreneurs to know about VCs. > Okay, if an I-told-you-so is your long game then fine. No it's not my "long game". It's just a small side issue and a way maybe eventually to make a point that should help entrepreneurs: If I am successful, then I will be able to claim that I long tried to get VCs interested and they never were. So, the lesson for entrepreneurs is, VC don't know how to pick good projects, and entrepreneurs should invest little or no time and effort in contacting VCs. Am I angry with VCs for their deliberate and harmful deception? Yes. But I'm not as angry as you are with what I posted that harmed you not at all. You continued with your pejorative and just plain wrong remarks: > crackpot rant > inscrutable diatribe > You have this major axe to grind with VCs, I don't judge that (have plenty of sour grapes myself), but what are you to gain from publishing an inscrutable diatribe? As I explained, I am in line to help other entrepreneurs. > look crazy. Not at all. The VCs are being deliberately deceptive and harmful, and I am warning entrepreneurs. For your > But here's the problem: all these words are absolutely meaningless outside your private context. It's not my "private context" at all. What is on the VC Web sites is deliberately deceptive and harmful bait to nearly all the entrepreneurs and not just to me. What the VCs are doing is not about me; I'm just one example, but what the VCs are doing is quite general. Clearly you didn't know the information about VCs I provided. So, I was doing you, along with all Hacker News readers, a favor. Your response was to become angry with what I wrote and attack me personally. Your attacking what I posted looks "crazy". My view is that until the VCs improve their ability to evaluate projects and the LPs let such VCs use their judgment, information technology VC is on the way out of business. E.g., long on average their ROI has not been good. And the world of information technology startups has changed so much that the old VC and LP approaches will no longer work. In business, one of the most important decisions a founder makes is whom else to work with. Well, then, no good information technology entrepreneurs should want to report to a BoD of VCs -- they just don't have the "right stuff".
- dasil003 9y ago
  All that time composing a response and you didn't even bother to look who you're responding to.
  - graycat 9y ago
    I reduced the time to respond. But my response was still basically correct for you also.
    - dasil003 9y ago
      Uh, no it's not, I have no skin in the game, I was just pointing out why you're getting downvoted to oblivion. Quoting a different post, attributing it to me, and then imagining my motivations is entering the realm of pure fantasy.
      - graycat 9y ago
        "Fantasy" -- there you go again. Some local junior college may be able to give you some remedial education in reading comprehension. I'm being attacked because I'm posting thoughts that are unusual. It's the same as in the usual advice never to talk about politics, sex, or religion. My thoughts are upsetting to some people. One reason for the upset is just simple jealousy. Or, it is common to try to beat down a nail that sticks up. Or to gang up on anyone who does not conform to the group. Point by point, you have yet to be able to find even a single point where I said something wrong. But being successful, e.g., even just enough for VC funding, means that something is unusual. Planning and executing a $1T market cap is even more unusual -- just "another Google" comes along only about once each 10 years, and $1T has not happened yet. No doubt plenty of people would have dumped on Henry Ford as he was becoming successful. I've done NOTHING wrong. The people attacking me need to look at their motivations. I expected too much of the HN audience; I over estimated that audience and was wrong.
        sk5t 9y ago
        Well, you might consider that VCs really do want to make money, but that they also must filter out a continuous stream of cold emails from starry-eyed dreamers and con-men, and if your emails and references have proven ineffective, the VCs' heuristics--which have nothing to do with you personally--have bucketed them thusly. I suppose one could address that by doubling-down on professional networking, getting better at writing a pitch + value proposition, by recruiting a team with experience writing production-grade software, marketing, running a business, etc., etc. Bring on the upsetting, revolutionary ideas, but please, put away the vagaries and hurt feelings, for they will not serve well here. Those of us in the industry for a while have heard many, many $Texas sized ideas with no teeth.

graycat 9y ago

You are angry about something. You are angry with me about something, but you have no reason to be. At https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15624067 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15624067 is the thread > Our Odd Startup: 3½ Guys, No VC, Profitability, and Patience and I responded with > My Odd Startup! > One guy, no VC, patience, problem identified, for solution, crucial secret sauce found and scalable, production quality code written, alpha test in progress, meager burn rate, no users or revenue yet. that is, I responded in kind, and you got angry. So, you post a list of unjustified, pejorative remarks about my behavior: > play coy > flog dissatisfaction > throw out outrageous > rile people up Then you posted > Microsoft's frankly very irritating old developer tools. That's uninformed: You must have in mind Microsoft's old Visual Basic, not Visual Basic .NET. Look, in case it is not fully clear yet, at their Web sites US information technology VCs, apparently nearly all of them, are seriously, deliberately, and harmfully deceiving entrepreneurs. Hacker News readers should be aware of this fact. The situation is not particular to me but to nearly every entrepreneur in the world who visits the Web sites. Here is their deception: They claim to fund information technology entrepreneurs and list their criteria. But their lists are deliberately deceptive because they refuse to list the most important parts of their criteria. Here are five items, apparently important to crucial, of their criteria they refuse to list: (1) Likely and apparently, the most important item of their criteria is that the entrepreneur's project must have traction or revenue or earnings significant and growing rapidly. (2) Likely and apparently, one item of their criteria is that they regard any contact directly by an entrepreneur as "from over the transom" (there is some scatological symbolism here) and refuse to consider it. (3) Likely and apparently, they nearly always insist on a "team" of several persons and will automatically reject a sole founder. (4) They want an entrepreneur to have "references". But having references from CEOs of Fortune 500 companies and Presidents of some of the world's best research universities don't count. (5) They claim to want highly qualified entrepreneurs, but the qualifications they want would not help a person get admitted to a STEM field Ph.D. program, be hired for a tenure track position in a STEM field at a research university, etc. And peer reviewed published papers in a STEM field and relevant to the entrepreneur's company don't count, either. Of these five, likely the most important is the first one, traction. E.g., I posted the statement from venture firm USV: > If you’re a founder or potential founder building something transformational, I’m so eager to meet you. I’m on a new adventure and I’m ready to dive into yours, too. You can reach me at Rebecca@USV.com. So, here she says "potential founder" implying that she wants to hear from persons, including single persons and not necessarily a team, who are not yet founders. So, they won't yet have traction, etc. She says "building" and not "have built". So she is considering work in progress. Then she says: "I’m so eager to meet you." I can't believe that. So, I wrote her. Never heard back anything. Her statement is just an example of the theme: VCs won't say what their real criteria are, and this is clearly both deceptive and deliberate. Entrepreneurs are being hurt because they take the VC bait and invest time and effort in responding for no good reason. Again, here is how this VC deliberate deception hurts entrepreneurs: VCs don't want to say this, but entrepreneurs need to know it or do what I did -- jerk the chains of nearly every VC on both US coasts with pitches of every style all for no good reason. Again, that VCs want traction is, thus, a fairly solid conclusion and really important for entrepreneurs to know about VCs. > Okay, if an I-told-you-so is your long game then fine. No it's not my "long game". It's just a small side issue and a way maybe eventually to make a point that should help entrepreneurs: If I am successful, then I will be able to claim that I long tried to get VCs interested and they never were. So, the lesson for entrepreneurs is, VC don't know how to pick good projects, and entrepreneurs should invest little or no time and effort in contacting VCs. Am I angry with VCs for their deliberate and harmful deception? Yes. But I'm not as angry as you are with what I posted that harmed you not at all. You continued with your pejorative and just plain wrong remarks: > crackpot rant > inscrutable diatribe > You have this major axe to grind with VCs, I don't judge that (have plenty of sour grapes myself), but what are you to gain from publishing an inscrutable diatribe? As I explained, I am in line to help other entrepreneurs. > look crazy. Not at all. The VCs are being deliberately deceptive and harmful, and I am warning entrepreneurs. For your > But here's the problem: all these words are absolutely meaningless outside your private context. It's not my "private context" at all. What is on the VC Web sites is deliberately deceptive and harmful bait to nearly all the entrepreneurs and not just to me. What the VCs are doing is not about me; I'm just one example, but what the VCs are doing is quite general. Clearly you didn't know the information about VCs I provided. So, I was doing you, along with all Hacker News readers, a favor. Your response was to become angry with what I wrote and attack me personally. Your attacking what I posted looks "crazy". My view is that until the VCs improve their ability to evaluate projects and the LPs let such VCs use their judgment, information technology VC is on the way out of business. E.g., long on average their ROI has not been good. And the world of information technology startups has changed so much that the old VC and LP approaches will no longer work. In business, one of the most important decisions a founder makes is whom else to work with. Well, then, no good information technology entrepreneurs should want to report to a BoD of VCs -- they just don't have the "right stuff".

dasil003 9y ago
All that time composing a response and you didn't even bother to look who you're responding to.
- graycat 9y ago
  I reduced the time to respond. But my response was still basically correct for you also.
  - dasil003 9y ago
    Uh, no it's not, I have no skin in the game, I was just pointing out why you're getting downvoted to oblivion. Quoting a different post, attributing it to me, and then imagining my motivations is entering the realm of pure fantasy.
    - graycat 9y ago
      "Fantasy" -- there you go again. Some local junior college may be able to give you some remedial education in reading comprehension. I'm being attacked because I'm posting thoughts that are unusual. It's the same as in the usual advice never to talk about politics, sex, or religion. My thoughts are upsetting to some people. One reason for the upset is just simple jealousy. Or, it is common to try to beat down a nail that sticks up. Or to gang up on anyone who does not conform to the group. Point by point, you have yet to be able to find even a single point where I said something wrong. But being successful, e.g., even just enough for VC funding, means that something is unusual. Planning and executing a $1T market cap is even more unusual -- just "another Google" comes along only about once each 10 years, and $1T has not happened yet. No doubt plenty of people would have dumped on Henry Ford as he was becoming successful. I've done NOTHING wrong. The people attacking me need to look at their motivations. I expected too much of the HN audience; I over estimated that audience and was wrong.
      - sk5t 9y ago
        Well, you might consider that VCs really do want to make money, but that they also must filter out a continuous stream of cold emails from starry-eyed dreamers and con-men, and if your emails and references have proven ineffective, the VCs' heuristics--which have nothing to do with you personally--have bucketed them thusly. I suppose one could address that by doubling-down on professional networking, getting better at writing a pitch + value proposition, by recruiting a team with experience writing production-grade software, marketing, running a business, etc., etc. Bring on the upsetting, revolutionary ideas, but please, put away the vagaries and hurt feelings, for they will not serve well here. Those of us in the industry for a while have heard many, many $Texas sized ideas with no teeth.