5 ms·

Publishing the list feels unprofessional and manipulative, especially considering: > When I make these posts suddenly people start returning my emails request

Publishing the list feels unprofessional and manipulative, especially considering: > When I make these posts suddenly people start returning my emails requesting data. Even as a causal observer of the VC market, I was able to spot a lot of false positives in that list.

hippo33 14y ago
How is this manipulative? While the data may not be 100% accurate, I think the author makes a lot of great points about finding out what series A deals a particular investor has done to know whether this is a good fit.
- sheri 14y ago
  > These are partners at venture firms who are 3-5 years into investing their fund, don’t have very strong results so far, and are struggling to raise new funds. The post is manipulative because it defines zombie VC's as above. However, the data used to arrive at the list does not hold up to the above definition.
gojomo 14y ago
Often "publish-then-correct" reaches the truth faster, asymptotically, than waiting to get everything right before publishing. Call it "Minimum Viable Truthiness", if you'd like.
- klochner 14y ago
  It just felt to me like retribution for this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5491293 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5491293 Where I'm guessing that refer.ly is trying to raise their own series a and possibly getting frustrated. That said - entrepreneurs should be more concerned with growing a business than making friends with VCs, so more power to danielle if this is how she ends up making it work.
  - dmor 14y ago
    It's certainly not retribution, I posted that story and I think it's interesting - and then it turned into a TC story! Refer.ly recently pivoted - in fact every stat about our business is on the front page of our site. We aren't raising Series A, we have ~18 months of runway left at our current burn.
ritchiea 14y ago
Why not publish it if you publish the article? It's not as though someone else would be unable to pull the very same data. She isn't explicitly calling any of those VCs zombies, just noting that they meet one of her core criteria. You're implying that information which may not be used wisely by the reader is unprofessional to publish. Furthermore if those firms are healthy they have nothing to fear.
driverdan 14y ago
> Publishing the list feels unprofessional and manipulative There's nothing unprofessional about publishing interesting data. The framing around it is what makes it manipulative. I can see how putting such a list along with the preceding blog post could feel... wrong. > Even as a causal observer of the VC market, I was able to spot a lot of false positives in that list. A great point. If you're going to publish data make sure it's correct first.
andreasklinger 14y ago
The method is not perfect. But a first step. Because of lists like this VCs might in near future keep their traction very public on angellist and crunchbase, allowing founders to make better decisions.

hippo33 14y ago

How is this manipulative? While the data may not be 100% accurate, I think the author makes a lot of great points about finding out what series A deals a particular investor has done to know whether this is a good fit.

sheri 14y ago
> These are partners at venture firms who are 3-5 years into investing their fund, don’t have very strong results so far, and are struggling to raise new funds. The post is manipulative because it defines zombie VC's as above. However, the data used to arrive at the list does not hold up to the above definition.

gojomo 14y ago

Often "publish-then-correct" reaches the truth faster, asymptotically, than waiting to get everything right before publishing. Call it "Minimum Viable Truthiness", if you'd like.

klochner 14y ago
It just felt to me like retribution for this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5491293 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5491293 Where I'm guessing that refer.ly is trying to raise their own series a and possibly getting frustrated. That said - entrepreneurs should be more concerned with growing a business than making friends with VCs, so more power to danielle if this is how she ends up making it work.
- dmor 14y ago
  It's certainly not retribution, I posted that story and I think it's interesting - and then it turned into a TC story! Refer.ly recently pivoted - in fact every stat about our business is on the front page of our site. We aren't raising Series A, we have ~18 months of runway left at our current burn.

ritchiea 14y ago

Why not publish it if you publish the article? It's not as though someone else would be unable to pull the very same data. She isn't explicitly calling any of those VCs zombies, just noting that they meet one of her core criteria. You're implying that information which may not be used wisely by the reader is unprofessional to publish. Furthermore if those firms are healthy they have nothing to fear.

driverdan 14y ago

> Publishing the list feels unprofessional and manipulative There's nothing unprofessional about publishing interesting data. The framing around it is what makes it manipulative. I can see how putting such a list along with the preceding blog post could feel... wrong. > Even as a causal observer of the VC market, I was able to spot a lot of false positives in that list. A great point. If you're going to publish data make sure it's correct first.

andreasklinger 14y ago

The method is not perfect. But a first step. Because of lists like this VCs might in near future keep their traction very public on angellist and crunchbase, allowing founders to make better decisions.