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Having skimmed through that incoherent babbling rant, I know as a founder I will never want to do business with that guy.
by jwr 16y ago
Having skimmed through that incoherent babbling rant, I know as a founder I will never want to do business with that guy.
- fady 16y agothis has to be the ugliest blog post ever, especially coming from a hardass like Dave. +1 nphase. Who writes like this? - I don't care who you are, how much money you have, what companies you've helped...his writing stands on its own, very poorly written.
- jon_dahl 16y agoPersonally, I found his babbling rant highly coherent. That's just his style. He's a really smart guy and a good investor.
- Terretta 16y agoCoherent, yes. And so busy, there's no time for the shift key. I think this came in vogue among the tech affluent during the era of Crackberry supremacy -- easier to just thumb in all lowercase, and a significant portion of communication done from that device made staccato lowercase brevity socially acceptable.
- BrandonM 16y agoBlackBerries automatically capitalize the first letter after a period, so that theory doesn't really hold.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- jeebusroxors 16y agoBut you type in all lowercase (correct?), so typing: the quick brown fox... would turn into The quick brown fox... which would not translate to the PC. It would just stay lowercase.
- BrandonM 16y agoAre you really comparing typing on a PC keyboard to typing on a BlackBerry? My thumbs can only "type" so fast, but sitting at a keyboard I'm somewhere around 100 wpm. It feels like two completely different activities. At a keyboard, capitalization happens automatically without me even thinking about it. It's not a matter of bad habit, it's a conscious choice. When I'm IM'ing with friends, I typically type all lowercase (but with good spelling and punctuation) because it's what they do and it seems less formal. When I'm typing an email or an HN comment, the capitalization just happens.
- joshu 16y agoThey also capitalize if you hold the key down briefly. ... I miss my blackberry.
- endtime 16y agoWhat about the constant changes in font style and color? Pretty sure that took more effort than hitting the shift key would have.
- alanh 16y agoIt looks like an import from MS Word to me.
- raintrees 16y agoNot enough redundant font tags...
- Terretta 16y agoDidn't mean this particular piece. I was referring to the style of all lowercase, and to when I started noticing business people stop using initial caps. I used to catch myself doing it too after using a Sidekick and Moto Q for email on the go; still happens sometimes.
- jaybol 16y agowho doesn't want to be like ee cummings
- chegra 16y agoDon't be quick to judge. Lay back and make reasonable decision based on data not on writing. Look at the number of companies the investor has made successful. Sometimes people go into rants like this as a defense mechanism, so they are free to make correct choice, and not choice based on keeping everyone happy. I think it's one of the biggest hindrances to being successful is trying to make everyone happy. I don't agree with the methodology, but I encourage people to dig deeper.
- ryanwaggoner 16y agoLook at the number of companies the investor has made successful. How is this relevant to whether the investor was colluding?
- RyanMcGreal 16y agoI think the idea is that it's relevant to whether or not he's a good investor, notwithstanding his writing style.
- cwp 16y agoIt's not. Jwr accused Dave McClure of incoherence, not collusion.
- mattmaroon 16y agoHe tries to come off as some sort of "angel from the hood". I wouldn't be surprised to hear him say "yo boyyyyy, I be funding companiez." His money's as green as the next guy's though.
- zackattack 16y agoIf Birdman got into angel investing, I would take his money.
- physcab 16y agoThen I'm sure founders wouldn't have a problem taking the next guys money instead.
- Alex3917 16y agoHonestly the biggest problem with Silicon Valley is that 90% of the startups aren't trying to build real businesses, they're just trying to build something that will impress Mike Arrington to compensate for the fact that they had no friends in high school or whatever. At least Dave actually understands the mechanics of leadgen, SEO, margins, and the rest of what makes a business work unlike the rest of the hacks in the valley.
- webwright 16y agoCan't downvote this enough. Really? All 90% of people who quit their job to found a startup want to do is impress Arrington? They want the same thing that any founder wants-- a combination of happy users, business success, and an exit (though there's more emphasis on the exit for a lot of Valley folks). Save your venom for people who don't have the guts to start a company. Or better yet, save your venom entirely. The internet doesn't need any more.
- MartinCron 16y agoSave your venom entirely. The internet doesn't need any more That's one of the best things I've read in a long time.
- 16y ago
- nphase 16y agoIt was difficult for me to read this too; I have a really hard time reading multi-colored text with italics and underlines and font size differences. It kind of reminds me of highschool myspace accounts where GiRlS wOuLd tYpE lYkE ThIs.
- eof 16y agoTo be fair I did this in middle school even though I was not a girl. -- OxSpaZxO
- xelipe 16y agoThe only thing missing from that post was the blinking text and the spinning email image from circa 1999.
- maukdaddy 16y agoand a marquee.
- brudgers 16y agoWhat no hits counter?
- cparedes 16y agoIt was under construction.
- zackattack 16y agoDave McClure should've hosted his website on angelfire.com
- mxavier 16y agoI find it hard to believe that a grown adult can write like that. The whole thing was formatted and written like a MySpace bulletin from a high school kid circa 2004. Obviously the man is good at what he does but there is something to be said for tactfully dealing with problems like this.
- wyclif 16y agoThis post is a prime example of how awful a lot of tech writing is on the Web in general. I can think of book reports written by kids in public schools that feature better narrative, grammar, and spelling. Reading this made me want to stab myself.
- zaidf 16y agobetter narrative, grammar, and spelling Doh, in school you get brownie points for spelling right. In business as an investor, you don't.
- stanleydrew 16y agoArguably correct spelling and grammar and punctuation matters more in business where it actually affects credibility, rather than a silly letter grade between you and your teacher.
- zaidf 16y agoDepends on the context. For a VC who has built a style around misspelling and weirdly styled blog posts, those rules don't apply. We don't do spell check or grammar check on rap lyrics because those rules don't apply.
- raintrees 16y agoFood for thought: When wading through 100s of resumes, I do use frequent spelling/grammar errors to help me cull...
- zaidf 16y agoInvestors don't usually have to pass around their resumes like a typical job applicant.
- kmfrk 16y agoThe web is horizontal; one of the biggest problem with it is the lack of established hierarchy.
- markbao 16y agoThen you obviously haven't heard of Dave before this and are judging his business acumen by his writing style. Dave is an extremely smart (enough for inDinero, Twilio, and KISSmetrics to have him as an angel investor) and well-connected guy with an eccentric writing style.
- dkarl 16y agoHis punctuation and capitalization could be called eccentric. His writing style is a cliché, a bad one, that reinforces Arrington's point and undermines his own. For a blog post that purports to say, "Nothing is wrong here, just fair play and good capitalism," he shouldn't have adopted a style that, in fiction at least, always means, "This is a morally blinkered guy who needs to be reined in by the law, because he will never admit to seeing anything wrong with anything that gets him ahead." I admit I don't know anything about him and very little about the issue at hand; I'm just talking about style. I find it fascinating that he would model his blog persona after (in approximately equal parts) Gordon Gekko, Colonel Jessup, and Jay of Jay and Silent Bob. I mean, really, why would you adopt a personal style that is universally understood as shorthand for "arrogant and morally compromised asshole?" And if you did, why would you deny wrongdoing in a tone that signals to readers that you're incapable of caring or acknowledging if what you're doing is wrong? I'm not presuming guilt; you don't have to be evil to find classic movie villains like Gordon Gekko charismatic or even inspiring. It's just odd that he is apparently cultivating Arrington's story instead of defusing it. Could he be doing it on purpose? Does he relish the assumption that he's an evil mastermind? Or could there be a more boring financial motivation for it?
- markbao 16y ago>And if you did, why would you deny wrongdoing in a tone that signals to readers that you're incapable of caring or acknowledging if what you're doing is wrong? Because if he were to go ahead and write a mild-mannered piece about the collusion at that meeting or the lack thereof, those who know Dave and his variegated rants on his blog would see that as something out of the ordinary. He has pretty strong opinions, and they're converted from intensity to hex values. That's kind of his style. He knows that people will go to his blog and think "wow, this guy's unprofessional," but that, too, is part of it.
- mailarchis 16y agoWell, if am not wrong he was an early investor in mint.com. And he has some interesting insights about startup metrics (google AAARR metrics). The rant on the post is his signature style
- DJN 16y ago"innovation & investing is not about price. it's about finding great entrepreneurs to build solid companies, and solve customer problems" That's the reason why I WOULD DO BUSINESS with Dave. Anyone who as followed Dave even remotely over the past half decade will understand and appreciate his style. He says it as it is and that rare candour is something special in the venture capital business.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- joeag 16y agoYou must really appreciate form over substance then. The ideas expressed are right on and favorable to the entrepreneur - guys like Dave are forcing all investors to deal with entrepreneurs on more equal terms, if only by providing them more options.
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- jimborey 16y agoI agree. The author comes across more as a midshipman in the US Navy talking with a fellow enlistee rather than as a professional. As an entrepreneur, I would not want to have as an investor someone who thinks in the terms that his writing reflects. Life is too short. Others have similar or better qualifications and are more pleasant to deal with. I would prefer someone who comes across as being more "bien eleve."
- mkramlich 16y agoIt's his style. He is a pretty smart guy and writes a bit better in most of his other posts.
- iamelgringo 16y agoThat's a shame, because Dave is one of the charter members of the PayPal Mafia and one of the top angels in Silicon Valley, has an extremely impressive CV and by all accounts a great guy.[1] He was director of marketing for PayPal, and he know exactly what he's doing in writing like that. Frankly, I think his writing is hilarious. Please, this is Hacker News, disagree with the substance of his thoughts, not his style of communication[2]. ref: [1] http://500hats.typepad.com/500blogs/about-dave-mcclure.html http://500hats.typepad.com/500blogs/about-dave-mcclure.html [2] http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html
- jimborey 16y agoThe style is a reflection of the substance. The style reflects the thought process and the concrete representation of thought as expressed in writing. The (mis)use of the English language by Dave is reprehensible and abhorrent and has no place in professional discourse.
- CamperBob 16y agoIf that page is any indication, it sounds like he was just lucky enough to be hanging around the building when the money truck came by. I wouldn't put him charge of marketing dog food.