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Repeat After Me: Investors Are Never the Story
- j_baker 16y agoI suppose investors are brand names when you get down to it. Ever notice how movie previews always begin with "from the producer/writer/director of <popular movie x>"? Same thing here. I'm curious why serial entrepreneurs don't get the same credit though. Perhaps investors just invest in more companies than serial entrepreneurs start.
- fliph 16y agoThe importance of the <popular movie person> mentioned in the movie preview is directly proportional to how good the movie is going to be. e.g., "From the director of Avatar..." is probably going to be a good movie. "From the sound editor of Forrest Gump" doesn't have quite the same chances. I can't recall what movie it was, but I once saw a trailer that touted itself as "from the company that distributed <not very good movie>." The movie proved to be terrible.
- neworbit 16y agoMy impression is that serial entrepreneurs do get such credit, c.f. Jim Clark in the Netscape days
- johnrob 16y agoHacker News is reasonably guilty of this. How many headlines have we seen with something like (YC W10) in it?
- tjarratt 16y agoI figure this is more like a secret handshake. Presumably anyone reading news at news.ycombinator.com will have an inherent interest in companies that YC invests in. Not that (YC W10) is a very subtle signal, but it's signaling something to the audience.
- DevX101 16y agoInvestor names are usually mentioned to establish social proof, but I find that it's rarely the case that the article itself focuses on the investor not the company. For his example RockMelt, I just picked 4 random stories from Google News -- most of them mentioned Marc Andreesen but he wasn't the focus of the article.
- jcampbell1 16y agoIs there an endorsement stronger than real money?