4 ms·

Rejected from a VC due to tech stack

23 points by nreece 5y ago

ericalexander0 5y ago
They're not wrong, on all levels. I'm a hiring manager at C# shop, that's doing plenty of ML. Is C# a popular language? Out of the 35 recent interviews I've done, I think I've seen 5 candidates do their code exercises in C#. I've had the: are you willing to learn C# conversation with all of them. None said no. The problem isn't do you know it, or could you learn it. The problem, for a startup, is ramp up time. New engineers have to learn the IDE and the nuances of C#. It's a powerful language and the IDEs are great, but there's no way around the ramp up time. Can a startup accommodate the ramp up time while scaling? We did, it's possible, but I can see why a VC was concerned. Now Azure? Well, if you can't say anything nice....
- naikrovek 5y ago
  > Now Azure? Well, if you can't say anything nice.... clearly you haven't been using the same Azure that I've been using. I have nothing but good things to say about it. Azure DevOps is fucking fantastic in every way. I know there's more to Azure than AZDO but it came to mind first, so it got mentioned. LOGGING IN to AWS is enough to make me hate it. Everything about AWS is wrong, from how it works to the company that runs it. AWS can die, now, and my life would change, but I'd be happier because I'd know AWS was dead. AWS earned my hatred, by the way. well and truly earned it. screw AWS. screw Amazon.
  - vyrotek 5y ago
    Agreed! Azure has been fantastic for me. I've dreaded having to figure out the AWS portal when I had to in the past. I've now helped build new platforms for 3 companies on Azure with C#, SQL Server, Azure DevOps. The productivity of our teams was amazing.
version_five 5y ago
Right or wrong, there are examples of people talking about how their tech stack was their competitive advantage for their startup. So it's not a surprise that some would see a particular stack as a disadvantage.
- smt88 5y ago
  Yeah, but in this case it's hardly a niche stack, nor would it have been hard to change it. The stack could also easily add F#, unlocking a new pool of talent and perhaps simplifying some of the dev work.
cardosof 5y ago
A data/analytics/ML company nowadays without python will certainly raise eyebrows, but I naively thought VCs cared mostly about potential market, founders profiles, initial results and those kinds of things - not the tech stack.
karmakaze 5y ago
In addition to all the valid reasons given. There's another consideration in that VCs aren't only in it for the money. They talk about their investments in their circles and .Net likely isn't in fashion and would put them as the odd-one-out. They can probably also do get a lot of cross-company support between investments with shared technologies.
redis_mlc 5y ago
It might have been what the article said, "You should be able to switch." but more likely it was that Microsoft products don't scale financially - a cluster of 1,000 nodes is 1,000 times more expensive than 1 node, unlike Open Source.
potamic 5y ago
They are into analytics and looks like they're using CosmosDb for the heavy lifting. I wonder why the focus on language. They could do the application layer in PHP for all that matters. This reminds me of the hedgehog type of advisor from the thought leaders article the other day. The hedgehog sees every problem through the same lens and applies this to all situations - if you are doing data analytics you must use python!
jeffshek 5y ago
I suspect the tech stack was merely the 5th or 6th reason for not funding, they were just looking for a way to move on. If they were reasonably interested, VCs won't say no - they just pretend to not see your emails until someone is about to lead a round.
- smackeyacky 5y ago
  This is the most likely answer. There would have been a few other warning signs durung the due diligence but most VCs who have rejected me have used some incredibly lame excuse instead of being honest. It wouldn't hurt them to simply say "we don't understand this and that makes us uncomfortable" instead of bullshit like "doesn't fit our investment profile" or the tech stack is wrong. Trying to educate VCs in something out of their comfort zone is like trying to teach a pig to tapdance. Most of them I have had dealings with have such limited life experience they will never really understand agtech or biotech.

23 points by nreece 5y ago

They're not wrong, on all levels. I'm a hiring manager at C# shop, that's doing plenty of ML. Is C# a popular language? Out of the 35 recent interviews I've done, I think I've seen 5 candidates do their code exercises in C#. I've had the: are you willing to learn C# conversation with all of them. None said no. The problem isn't do you know it, or could you learn it. The problem, for a startup, is ramp up time. New engineers have to learn the IDE and the nuances of C#. It's a powerful language and the IDEs are great, but there's no way around the ramp up time. Can a startup accommodate the ramp up time while scaling? We did, it's possible, but I can see why a VC was concerned. Now Azure? Well, if you can't say anything nice....

naikrovek 5y ago
> Now Azure? Well, if you can't say anything nice.... clearly you haven't been using the same Azure that I've been using. I have nothing but good things to say about it. Azure DevOps is fucking fantastic in every way. I know there's more to Azure than AZDO but it came to mind first, so it got mentioned. LOGGING IN to AWS is enough to make me hate it. Everything about AWS is wrong, from how it works to the company that runs it. AWS can die, now, and my life would change, but I'd be happier because I'd know AWS was dead. AWS earned my hatred, by the way. well and truly earned it. screw AWS. screw Amazon.
- vyrotek 5y ago
  Agreed! Azure has been fantastic for me. I've dreaded having to figure out the AWS portal when I had to in the past. I've now helped build new platforms for 3 companies on Azure with C#, SQL Server, Azure DevOps. The productivity of our teams was amazing.

version_five 5y ago

Right or wrong, there are examples of people talking about how their tech stack was their competitive advantage for their startup. So it's not a surprise that some would see a particular stack as a disadvantage.

smt88 5y ago
Yeah, but in this case it's hardly a niche stack, nor would it have been hard to change it. The stack could also easily add F#, unlocking a new pool of talent and perhaps simplifying some of the dev work.

cardosof 5y ago

A data/analytics/ML company nowadays without python will certainly raise eyebrows, but I naively thought VCs cared mostly about potential market, founders profiles, initial results and those kinds of things - not the tech stack.

karmakaze 5y ago

In addition to all the valid reasons given. There's another consideration in that VCs aren't only in it for the money. They talk about their investments in their circles and .Net likely isn't in fashion and would put them as the odd-one-out. They can probably also do get a lot of cross-company support between investments with shared technologies.

redis_mlc 5y ago

It might have been what the article said, "You should be able to switch." but more likely it was that Microsoft products don't scale financially - a cluster of 1,000 nodes is 1,000 times more expensive than 1 node, unlike Open Source.

potamic 5y ago

They are into analytics and looks like they're using CosmosDb for the heavy lifting. I wonder why the focus on language. They could do the application layer in PHP for all that matters. This reminds me of the hedgehog type of advisor from the thought leaders article the other day. The hedgehog sees every problem through the same lens and applies this to all situations - if you are doing data analytics you must use python!

jeffshek 5y ago

I suspect the tech stack was merely the 5th or 6th reason for not funding, they were just looking for a way to move on. If they were reasonably interested, VCs won't say no - they just pretend to not see your emails until someone is about to lead a round.

smackeyacky 5y ago
This is the most likely answer. There would have been a few other warning signs durung the due diligence but most VCs who have rejected me have used some incredibly lame excuse instead of being honest. It wouldn't hurt them to simply say "we don't understand this and that makes us uncomfortable" instead of bullshit like "doesn't fit our investment profile" or the tech stack is wrong. Trying to educate VCs in something out of their comfort zone is like trying to teach a pig to tapdance. Most of them I have had dealings with have such limited life experience they will never really understand agtech or biotech.