When an entrepreneur gets a "rejection" by a venture partner, that is only very weak evidence that there is anything wrong with the entrepreneur's project. Ins

When an entrepreneur gets a "rejection" by a venture partner, that is only very weak evidence that there is anything wrong with the entrepreneur's project. Instead, the project might become very successful. Uh, a venture partner is not some wise judge obligated to thoroughly evaluate all the projects and pick the best ones. In particular he is not obligated to fund all the good projects. Instead a venture partner is just a person, with some time, energy, interests, expertise, obligations, and, usually, funds. So when an entrepreneur contacts venture partners, major fractions of those partners: (1) are fully busy with their current investments, e.g., helping troubled CEOs, doing triage, or trying to arrange exits, (2) are busy raising a new fund from the limited partners (much like the entrepreneurs try to do from the venture partners), (3) are near the end of their last fund and maybe making some follow-on investments but no new investments until they get a new fund (if they do), (4) are close to retirement and just winding down, (5) are looking to leave their present firm for another venture firm or maybe something else, (6) are focusing on investments at a stage different from the entrepreneur's project, (7) are focusing on a 'space' different from the entrepreneur's project, (8) have their voice-mail and e-mail in-boxes full and are only looking at deals already filtered for them by a few people they know, (9) have already made a lot of money and just are not working very hard now, (10) are geographically too far from the entrepreneur. Also, venture partners just rarely look at seed or Series A deals in any great detail. In particular only a tiny fraction of venture partners have the time, patience, and qualifications for looking at details. Instead of details or anything thorough, to save time and brain energy, venture partners concentrate on a few surrogate decision criteria. For a seed deal for, say, a Web 2.0 project, they see if the area of the company is hot and if the team has made money for venture partners before and maybe try the user interface and evaluate the user experience. Again for Web 2.0, for a Series A, they look at ComScore numbers and revenue and earnings numbers. Or, a venture partner tries to invest in some deals where they can make some money but do not put in all the extra effort needed to invest in all good deals or find the very best deals. They don't worry that they might miss a good deal. For missing the next Google, they believe that no one in venture capital can detect the next Google in seed and Series A deals so don't worry about that. This isn't the best they would, could, or should do; and it's not what their Web site or public image suggests they do; it's just what they do do.