3 ms·
First this: "The first half is going to be your pitch, the second will be me hitting on you." Then this: "Honestly, the thing I'm most excited about is the p
by edw519 16y ago
First this:
"The first half is going to be your pitch, the second will be me hitting on you."
Then this:
"Honestly, the thing I'm most excited about is the prospect of seeing you naked later tonight."
Please don't forget that any pitch must work both ways. We entrepreneurs should be evaluating potential investors with at least as much rigor as they evaluate us. They're not giving away money to lucky lottery winners, they're trading it for something else, something often much more valuable than their money: our blood, sweat, and tears in what could be a once in a lifetime opportunity.
It's difficult to find a silver lining in this cloud, but let me give it a try:
Anyone spoken to by people like these, no matter who they are, should thank these investors for eliminating themselves. Better to find out what they are like now before wasting any more time (or worse) on them. The only thing that really surprised me about this story was:
She said she felt nauseous but pressed on with her pitch.
Why bother? Better she should focus her energy on building a great business that will attract investors with professionalism and integrity. They're out there, just harder to find.
At least they were until the pigs like this opened their mouths.
- johngalt 16y agoSame thing I thought. If a VC started hitting on me during the pitch I'd leave, and frankly I wouldn't deal with a VC that would treat any founder this way. If they will use power to exploit why even consider a partnership with them?
- danilocampos 16y agoPigs indeed — agree completely. No one should do business with such creeps. At the same time, especially when you're starting out, you've got a lot of insecurity already, male or female, about your pitch, about your idea, your business, everything. It's fucked up to ladle on ever more confusion to the process by making the beginner wonder if a rebuke will foul other opportunities. The relationship should be reciprocal, yes, but let's be real, the investor has done this way more than the entrepreneur. The imbalance of power feels real and it's disgusting to see it abused so crassly.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- mechanical_fish 16y agoWhy bother [pressing on with her pitch]? It might well have seemed like the most diplomatic path out of the room. One might also make allowance for shock. When you're stunned, a natural reaction is to fall back on the script. If I might dare to speculate further... One wonders how easy it is to know just when to walk out. I'm a man, a straight man, a clueless straight man, so I have no real first-hand idea of what it's like to be hit on all the time. But my understanding is that women get hit on a lot. Like, really a lot. Depending on the woman and the circumstances, one might even use the word "constantly". So one imagines that few women in tech can afford to have a hard-and-fast "if you hit on me I'll walk out in a huff" rule. Instead, one imagines that at one time or another every woman has felt that "nauseous" feeling of being hit on against her wishes. And that "at one time or another" can sometimes mean "several times per day". And I'll bet it wears you down. Or toughens you up. Actually, I'll bet it does both, at exactly the same time. My guess is that the poor woman in that story was pressing forward, rolling her eyes inwardly, and feeling nauseous and miserable all at once. She kept going because she had trained herself to suppress that desire to retch, even though her nausea was her subconscious trying to tell her to flee the room. But all I can really do is guess, of course.