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[reposting earlier comment reply as a top level comment + edited] Disclaimer: my whole career is on the consumer software side, so I can only speak to that. I

[reposting earlier comment reply as a top level comment + edited] Disclaimer: my whole career is on the consumer software side, so I can only speak to that. I have zero insight on Kleiner as it relates to enterprise. My first time inside KP was in 2003, working out of their office for a few months during a coding internship at Digital Chocolate. Great snacks and drinks freely available made quite impression on me as a college student. Second time was in 2011 when I came in to pitch my first startup with Aileen Lee. It was a pre-revenue consumer play, not particularly in her wheelhouse of e-commerce, so nothing came of it. She was pleasant and professional. My only complaint was that she/Kleiner didn't seem particularly "hip". Not that VCs are particularly known for their cool factor, but for some reason I had expected something a little less square based on Kleiner's reputation. I think this otherwise excellent article does a disservice by not mentioning Ilya Fushman joining on their timeline of key events. (It does mention him later, mostly in passing). I've never worked with him, but we have mutual acquaintances and have probably been to a few of the same parties. From my perspective as a not-total-outsider, Fushman brings some fresh thinking to a firm that is badly in need of relevancy/culture refresh. If they'd had someone like him there in 2011, for example, that would have made for a much more interesting meeting for me and other other consumer-facing entrepreneurs. Not sure if and when they'll ever regain the kind of dominance they had at their heyday, but I do think being hipster credibility matters for consumer plays, and with Fushman on board Kleiner now has a solid chance to play in this space again.

username223 7y ago
> pre-revenue consumer play So, translating that into English, you were losing money giving something to individual people, but hoped you could do... what? Start charging money? Harvest data? Get bought before you ran out of VC money? This sort of "founder" bafflegab is annoying.
- nemothekid 7y ago
  He could have done any of those things, but it's not relevant to the story. In this case what 'pre-revenue consumer play' means they were a company focused on showing user growth before generating revenue, and the VC they pitched had more experience e-commerce companies (which usually have some revenue).
- mindgam3 7y ago
  Lol. By all means, make fun of this strategy now, I do it myself, but you have to understand what it was like in silicon valley back in those days, 2010-2011. Facebook was the game in town, and these were the days when for the true believers, myself included, it was going to deliver us from evil (yeah, I know). The “smart money” either were Facebook insiders or wished they were, ie everyone knew that to insist on meaningful revenue before writing a seed stage check meant missing out on the next Facebook. I was a first time founder who started out as a build engineer, then engineer, tech lead, and PM. I’d been bootstrapping for two years and needed to raise. I didn’t know shit about business or venture capital other than that it’s apparently how dreams get made. So I figured out how to position the company to get funded, and got it done. Did I have a proven revenue model? No, but I had a few plausible directions, and that was enough to get to the next phase, so I didn’t sweat it. Would I pitch a pre-revenue startup on Sand Hill in 2019? Unlikely. Maybe that’s obvious to everyone now. But it’s a lot easier to be on the outside making fun of failed projects than to actually forego the cushy salary and go for it as a founder.
  - username223 7y ago
    I wasn't commenting on the strategy (which I agree is less than great) as much as the language. "Pre-revenue" as a euphemism for "we're losing money," "play" as one for "likely-to-fail business," etc. I could have called it "VC jargon," but "bafflegab" seemed appropriate, or maybe "Newspeak." Still, thanks for the explanation. I'm just an outsider looking in.
    - thoughtstheseus 7y ago
      Pre-revenue is a widely accepted term to describe a company, and usually an accurate one.

username223 7y ago

> pre-revenue consumer play So, translating that into English, you were losing money giving something to individual people, but hoped you could do... what? Start charging money? Harvest data? Get bought before you ran out of VC money? This sort of "founder" bafflegab is annoying.

nemothekid 7y ago
He could have done any of those things, but it's not relevant to the story. In this case what 'pre-revenue consumer play' means they were a company focused on showing user growth before generating revenue, and the VC they pitched had more experience e-commerce companies (which usually have some revenue).
mindgam3 7y ago
Lol. By all means, make fun of this strategy now, I do it myself, but you have to understand what it was like in silicon valley back in those days, 2010-2011. Facebook was the game in town, and these were the days when for the true believers, myself included, it was going to deliver us from evil (yeah, I know). The “smart money” either were Facebook insiders or wished they were, ie everyone knew that to insist on meaningful revenue before writing a seed stage check meant missing out on the next Facebook. I was a first time founder who started out as a build engineer, then engineer, tech lead, and PM. I’d been bootstrapping for two years and needed to raise. I didn’t know shit about business or venture capital other than that it’s apparently how dreams get made. So I figured out how to position the company to get funded, and got it done. Did I have a proven revenue model? No, but I had a few plausible directions, and that was enough to get to the next phase, so I didn’t sweat it. Would I pitch a pre-revenue startup on Sand Hill in 2019? Unlikely. Maybe that’s obvious to everyone now. But it’s a lot easier to be on the outside making fun of failed projects than to actually forego the cushy salary and go for it as a founder.
- username223 7y ago
  I wasn't commenting on the strategy (which I agree is less than great) as much as the language. "Pre-revenue" as a euphemism for "we're losing money," "play" as one for "likely-to-fail business," etc. I could have called it "VC jargon," but "bafflegab" seemed appropriate, or maybe "Newspeak." Still, thanks for the explanation. I'm just an outsider looking in.
  - thoughtstheseus 7y ago
    Pre-revenue is a widely accepted term to describe a company, and usually an accurate one.