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Job-seekers are always advised not to be negative about past employers. In other situations it is considered prudent to avoid this kind of talk, and I think it

Job-seekers are always advised not to be negative about past employers. In other situations it is considered prudent to avoid this kind of talk, and I think it is strongly against norms of American business. I am sure that most of the best classical artists had to watch their tongues around patrons. So I'm interested to know: how is it really different with VCs?

tptacek 14y ago
The VC/company relationship is really not at all like an employer/employee relationship. It would probably be very bad form and inadvisable to write something nasty about a VC you had worked with directly. But otherwise, we're talking about what is by necessity a highly mercenary part of the market.
- andyl 14y ago
  "The VC/company relationship is really not at all like an employer/employee relationship." They can fire you, and you can't fire them. That means you are the employee, and they are the employer. If everything goes great, you'll never have to put that relationship to the test. But things don't always go great...
  - tptacek 14y ago
    If you're an early stage company, the pre-revenue kind that we tend to think about when we talk about VCs on HN, the VC is buying a stake in 2-4 years of your output when they invest in you. Sure, they can "fire" you, in the sense that they often have the ability to vote you out of the company you founded, but this is usually a loss for them, not a win; they staked you, and you end up walking. Anyways, the number of instances we can cite of a VC removing an officer of a company because they were discovered to have written mean things about VC in the abstract is... let me go out on a limb here...
- michaelochurch 14y ago
  The VC/company relationship is really not at all like an employer/employee relationship. With VCs, the power dynamic is worse, because of the incestuous nature of that community. Your boss can fire you, but if he tries to blacklist you or otherwise fuck up your future jobs, and you catch him, you will not only be able to sue him and win, but you'll embarrass him and he'll probably never manage again in that company, if not lose his job. On the other hand, VCs talk to each other in all kinds of inappropriate and anti-competitive ways. They tend to look out for their own. So a VC can prevent you from raising money in the future if he wants to. So, in fact, the power relationship can be a lot worse. It's true that VCs don't micromanage, but when things get ugly, they can be a lot more damaging than a regular boss.
michaelochurch 14y ago
Job-seekers are always advised not to be negative about past employers. In other situations it is considered prudent to avoid this kind of talk, and I think it is strongly against norms of American business. I really don't like this blanket policy, because there are a lot of people doing bad things who deserve to be exposed. I'm not saying people should be a dick about it. After all, most people will have at least one job or company not work out and, 9 times out of 10, the best thing to do is move on with the best terms possible. Most of these things are like a breakup, in that there isn't an issue of "bad people"; things just didn't work and the best thing for everyone is to let it go, to be good to each other if they have to interact in the future, and to avoid each other if not. There are some cases that deserve to be blown, though. There was a startup in the 1990s that, when it was acquired, fired a few of its top performers (long story). If that's all it was, the smart thing for those people to do would be to move on, but it didn't end there. There was no severance, and the startup was forbidden, by a term in the acquisition contract, from giving any kind of reference. This was in biotech, which is more specialized and much smaller of a town. Without a reference these people were proper fucked. When these sorts of things happen, the right thing to do is blow every whistle you can and bring the bad guys down, with the end goal being to expose and humiliate them so badly that no one ever tries to pull that again.

Job-seekers are always advised not to be negative about past employers. In other situations it is considered prudent to avoid this kind of talk, and I think it is strongly against norms of American business. I am sure that most of the best classical artists had to watch their tongues around patrons. So I'm interested to know: how is it really different with VCs?

tptacek 14y ago

The VC/company relationship is really not at all like an employer/employee relationship. It would probably be very bad form and inadvisable to write something nasty about a VC you had worked with directly. But otherwise, we're talking about what is by necessity a highly mercenary part of the market.

andyl 14y ago
"The VC/company relationship is really not at all like an employer/employee relationship." They can fire you, and you can't fire them. That means you are the employee, and they are the employer. If everything goes great, you'll never have to put that relationship to the test. But things don't always go great...
- tptacek 14y ago
  If you're an early stage company, the pre-revenue kind that we tend to think about when we talk about VCs on HN, the VC is buying a stake in 2-4 years of your output when they invest in you. Sure, they can "fire" you, in the sense that they often have the ability to vote you out of the company you founded, but this is usually a loss for them, not a win; they staked you, and you end up walking. Anyways, the number of instances we can cite of a VC removing an officer of a company because they were discovered to have written mean things about VC in the abstract is... let me go out on a limb here...
michaelochurch 14y ago
The VC/company relationship is really not at all like an employer/employee relationship. With VCs, the power dynamic is worse, because of the incestuous nature of that community. Your boss can fire you, but if he tries to blacklist you or otherwise fuck up your future jobs, and you catch him, you will not only be able to sue him and win, but you'll embarrass him and he'll probably never manage again in that company, if not lose his job. On the other hand, VCs talk to each other in all kinds of inappropriate and anti-competitive ways. They tend to look out for their own. So a VC can prevent you from raising money in the future if he wants to. So, in fact, the power relationship can be a lot worse. It's true that VCs don't micromanage, but when things get ugly, they can be a lot more damaging than a regular boss.

michaelochurch 14y ago

Job-seekers are always advised not to be negative about past employers. In other situations it is considered prudent to avoid this kind of talk, and I think it is strongly against norms of American business. I really don't like this blanket policy, because there are a lot of people doing bad things who deserve to be exposed. I'm not saying people should be a dick about it. After all, most people will have at least one job or company not work out and, 9 times out of 10, the best thing to do is move on with the best terms possible. Most of these things are like a breakup, in that there isn't an issue of "bad people"; things just didn't work and the best thing for everyone is to let it go, to be good to each other if they have to interact in the future, and to avoid each other if not. There are some cases that deserve to be blown, though. There was a startup in the 1990s that, when it was acquired, fired a few of its top performers (long story). If that's all it was, the smart thing for those people to do would be to move on, but it didn't end there. There was no severance, and the startup was forbidden, by a term in the acquisition contract, from giving any kind of reference. This was in biotech, which is more specialized and much smaller of a town. Without a reference these people were proper fucked. When these sorts of things happen, the right thing to do is blow every whistle you can and bring the bad guys down, with the end goal being to expose and humiliate them so badly that no one ever tries to pull that again.