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I wonder what year it will be before the entrenched valley VC types realize that refusing to meet with people unless you have a mutual friend has profound conse

by CPLX 8y ago

I wonder what year it will be before the entrenched valley VC types realize that refusing to meet with people unless you have a mutual friend has profound consequences regarding the social and economic class and ethnicity of the people you do business with, and feel compelled to at least pause a moment to contemplate that fact before espousing the practice.

mylons 8y ago
not sure you realize the consequences of what you’re saying. taking an unfiltered approach would simply not scale. 90+% of startups fail. there has to be some quality filtering, even if it does discard some potential. i’d assert the type of startup you’re talking about is even more rare than your average unicorn.
- paulddraper 8y ago
  Exactly. This is the "must have a college degree" requirement.... That in itself tells you little, and there's a thousand cases it's the wrong filter, but the volume is so high that there must be some automated filter.
- CPLX 8y ago
  Of course I realize the consequences. My point is not that there should be no filter, but that this specific filter is deeply flawed. There are a nearly infinite number of other ways to filter the onslaught of requests, your fallacy-of-the-excluded-middle argument notwithstanding. It’s worth noting that the people in question have astonishing financial resources. Is this really the only and best possible solution under those circumstances?
gumby 8y ago
The default reason for this makes sense: knowing how to find a way to meet people you want to meet is a crucial skill in any startup and if you don't have that skill you'll likely fail so why not use that as an initial criterion, essentially as the first stage of the pipeline? The usual response is that if this were bad, the market would take care of it (someone would start a firm that didn't use this method and would find all the cool startups missed by the others, and at a better valuation to boot). Of course this is applied in other situations, as you said, not just VC investment. However there has been a market response. YC is the best known such, but other accelerator efforts such as techstars and university accelerators; angel aggregators and the like don't have similar qualification thresholds; those who pass through them have access to more traditional sources of capital.

by CPLX 8y ago

mylons 8y ago

not sure you realize the consequences of what you’re saying. taking an unfiltered approach would simply not scale. 90+% of startups fail. there has to be some quality filtering, even if it does discard some potential. i’d assert the type of startup you’re talking about is even more rare than your average unicorn.

paulddraper 8y ago
Exactly. This is the "must have a college degree" requirement.... That in itself tells you little, and there's a thousand cases it's the wrong filter, but the volume is so high that there must be some automated filter.
CPLX 8y ago
Of course I realize the consequences. My point is not that there should be no filter, but that this specific filter is deeply flawed. There are a nearly infinite number of other ways to filter the onslaught of requests, your fallacy-of-the-excluded-middle argument notwithstanding. It’s worth noting that the people in question have astonishing financial resources. Is this really the only and best possible solution under those circumstances?

gumby 8y ago

The default reason for this makes sense: knowing how to find a way to meet people you want to meet is a crucial skill in any startup and if you don't have that skill you'll likely fail so why not use that as an initial criterion, essentially as the first stage of the pipeline? The usual response is that if this were bad, the market would take care of it (someone would start a firm that didn't use this method and would find all the cool startups missed by the others, and at a better valuation to boot). Of course this is applied in other situations, as you said, not just VC investment. However there has been a market response. YC is the best known such, but other accelerator efforts such as techstars and university accelerators; angel aggregators and the like don't have similar qualification thresholds; those who pass through them have access to more traditional sources of capital.