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The reason Dave McClure is sick of being pitched is not because he's jaded or tired of doing what he does. It's because it's not humanly possible for a single

by pshin45 14y ago

The reason Dave McClure is sick of being pitched is not because he's jaded or tired of doing what he does. It's because it's not humanly possible for a single investor, be it Dave McClure or a YC partner, to process the sheer volume of pitches that come their way. There needs to be some sort of filtering mechanism, and endorsements/recommendations are one way of doing that. As Dave mentioned in the video embedded in the article, he WILL give his full attention to a founder IF they have already met with 500 Startups portfolio companies (i.e. people he trusts and respects) and proven to them that they are legit. People like Dave McClure (and pg) have thousands of people vying for his extremely limited time, and so giving his full attention to every pitch that comes his way would be a huge disservice to the other startups that actually deserve it i.e. have actually done their homework, put time in to prove themselves, and committed to forming long-term relationships with people in his community vs. those looking for a quick and easy shortcut to funding and networking.

ajross 14y ago
That's an explanation for the proximate cause of "do not fucking pitch me". And that part I understand just fine. My point was deeper: once the environment has reached a point where the important investors have "thousands of people vying for [their] extremely limited time", to the extent that "it's not humanly possible [...] to process the sheer volume of pitches", then it seems like the startup environment has jumped the shark. It's a machine now -- generate as many launches as possible, and pitch them to as many investors as possible. The focus is about funding -- not survival (does anyone remember "ramen profitable"? Yeah, we don't hear that so much anymore), and not products. Back in 2005, it didn't seem that way at all...
- pshin45 14y ago
  Touche, but is this hyper growth in startups necessarily a bad thing, or just a bump in the road and a bottleneck to be overcome? Despite how mainstream tech entrepreneurship has become, and despite how many founders are not in it for the right reasons, I still believe (or hope) it's mostly noise and the best products and founders will always rise to the top. The US (and the world) still needs more entrepreneurship to stay competitive, though perhaps not in its current model/form, and we haven't yet reached the point of diminishing returns in my opinion. This is a tangent to your main point, but TechCrunch had a pretty good piece on how YC tries to tackle this problem: http://techcrunch.com/2012/04/02/yc-y-combinator-scaling/ http://techcrunch.com/2012/04/02/yc-y-combinator-scaling/
  - ajross 14y ago
    Oh, I agree that entrepreneurship is important, and if a thousand iterations on "mobile social sharing app with nice typography" is the price to pay, then it's worth paying. But as someone who watched the end of the 90's boom, this feels the same way. I don't have numbers, but do any of us really believe there is enough future revenue in mobile social sharing apps with nice typography to justify the absolutely insane funding environment? I don't either. And there's a hard landing ahead.
- argonaut 14y ago
  As long as most of those people get turned away (and it seems like that is the case), everything is fine. AS long as most of these startups are failing, everything is as it should be. The only point at which anything has jumped the shark is when you start seeing 50 companies IPO at once.
- anthonyb 14y ago
  There's nothing wrong with filtering. Go have a look in your spam folder - there'll be thousands of emails in there, but nobody's saying that email's jumped the shark.

by pshin45 14y ago

ajross 14y ago

That's an explanation for the proximate cause of "do not fucking pitch me". And that part I understand just fine. My point was deeper: once the environment has reached a point where the important investors have "thousands of people vying for [their] extremely limited time", to the extent that "it's not humanly possible [...] to process the sheer volume of pitches", then it seems like the startup environment has jumped the shark. It's a machine now -- generate as many launches as possible, and pitch them to as many investors as possible. The focus is about funding -- not survival (does anyone remember "ramen profitable"? Yeah, we don't hear that so much anymore), and not products. Back in 2005, it didn't seem that way at all...

pshin45 14y ago
Touche, but is this hyper growth in startups necessarily a bad thing, or just a bump in the road and a bottleneck to be overcome? Despite how mainstream tech entrepreneurship has become, and despite how many founders are not in it for the right reasons, I still believe (or hope) it's mostly noise and the best products and founders will always rise to the top. The US (and the world) still needs more entrepreneurship to stay competitive, though perhaps not in its current model/form, and we haven't yet reached the point of diminishing returns in my opinion. This is a tangent to your main point, but TechCrunch had a pretty good piece on how YC tries to tackle this problem: http://techcrunch.com/2012/04/02/yc-y-combinator-scaling/ http://techcrunch.com/2012/04/02/yc-y-combinator-scaling/
- ajross 14y ago
  Oh, I agree that entrepreneurship is important, and if a thousand iterations on "mobile social sharing app with nice typography" is the price to pay, then it's worth paying. But as someone who watched the end of the 90's boom, this feels the same way. I don't have numbers, but do any of us really believe there is enough future revenue in mobile social sharing apps with nice typography to justify the absolutely insane funding environment? I don't either. And there's a hard landing ahead.
argonaut 14y ago
As long as most of those people get turned away (and it seems like that is the case), everything is fine. AS long as most of these startups are failing, everything is as it should be. The only point at which anything has jumped the shark is when you start seeing 50 companies IPO at once.
anthonyb 14y ago
There's nothing wrong with filtering. Go have a look in your spam folder - there'll be thousands of emails in there, but nobody's saying that email's jumped the shark.