4 ms·

There are plenty of great Stanford students but they're going to come to you. The purpose of an elite education (these days) is to give people the confidence to

There are plenty of great Stanford students but they're going to come to you. The purpose of an elite education (these days) is to give people the confidence to go out into the world. This means that the overlooked talent is probably not going to fit the "Stanford Wallflower" bill, but be somewhere that most VCs wouldn't deign to look. Driving across the street to Stanford "to identify and build new teams after seeing interactions" to scout talent isn't being proactive. It's what the rest of Sand Hill Road is already doing. If you're really serious about finding the best talent, broaden your search. Don't count the white Stanford males out, of course, but look in the "flyover" states, or for older programmers, or for women, or for parents who might be interested in programming because of the remote-work possibilities. Look outside of the US, even. VCs are good at telling the 7s Who Look Like Them apart from the 5s Who Look Like Them, and that's about where it ends. That makes them better at assessing talent than a great many in the business world, but they're missing out on an incredible amount of information.

javajosh 11y ago
>VCs are good at telling the 7s Who Look Like Them apart from the 5s Who Look Like Them... I don't understand this quip. Assuming you're talking about ability rather than attractiveness, it's odd that you leave out <5 or >7. Does that mean you think VCs have a blind spot for both superstars and low performers?
- michaelochurch 11y ago
  I thought that it was obvious that I was talking about ability. Why should it matter if the founders are attractive? VCs can probably tell a 5 apart from a 3, but it doesn't matter because neither a 3 nor a 5 is someone you want to fund. They can't tell a 7 from a 9, is what I'm saying. If they're not dealing with people of similar pedigree and experience, they may not be able to tell a 9 from a 5, even.
  - javajosh 11y ago
    Well, I suppose I'm curious then to know how you use this rating system, and what it means. I assume it's linear [1]. I think that "ranking people" is a fascinating topic in itself - unlike some, I do think there is validity to doing this although you have to be really careful to avoid bias, and to measure against the proper scale. I'd be interested to understand yours! [1] They aren't always: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lev_Landau#Landau.27s_List https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lev_Landau#Landau.27s_List
    - csa 11y ago
      I suggest checking out the blog at https://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/ https://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/. He has written a ton of stuff about VCs, programmers, etc. His riffs on the Gervais Principle are really good. He followed that up with some other gold. The scale-of-10 stuff is his concept of how there is a mismatch of skill and power in the tech business world -- particularly between the programmer and the business folks. For example, highly-rated business people don't even work in tech -- they do other finance like private equity or hedge funds. That means that most of the top VCs are maybe 7s, and they're bitter about their relatively low status among their B-school peers. That also means that the top tech people (the 10s) struggle to find business people who are their equivalent of awesomeness. This is a short summary.. read the original stuff on the blog. Some folks on HN do not like MO, so they seem to downvote him out of principle rather than based on the content. While I think that his tone can be terse at times (it seems to have gotten better in the past year or so), the content is often frighteningly spot on. I think that this makes some people uncomfortable.
malchow 11y ago
I disagree -- undergrads at Stanford are smart -- smarter than my coevals when I was an undergrad -- and indeed more world-smart. But they are not really brilliant at identifying markets, and are not brilliant at knowing their own weaknesses. These blind spots cohere across the elite undergrad landscape. These are two things that intelligent investors can do very well.

javajosh 11y ago

>VCs are good at telling the 7s Who Look Like Them apart from the 5s Who Look Like Them... I don't understand this quip. Assuming you're talking about ability rather than attractiveness, it's odd that you leave out <5 or >7. Does that mean you think VCs have a blind spot for both superstars and low performers?

michaelochurch 11y ago
I thought that it was obvious that I was talking about ability. Why should it matter if the founders are attractive? VCs can probably tell a 5 apart from a 3, but it doesn't matter because neither a 3 nor a 5 is someone you want to fund. They can't tell a 7 from a 9, is what I'm saying. If they're not dealing with people of similar pedigree and experience, they may not be able to tell a 9 from a 5, even.
- javajosh 11y ago
  Well, I suppose I'm curious then to know how you use this rating system, and what it means. I assume it's linear [1]. I think that "ranking people" is a fascinating topic in itself - unlike some, I do think there is validity to doing this although you have to be really careful to avoid bias, and to measure against the proper scale. I'd be interested to understand yours! [1] They aren't always: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lev_Landau#Landau.27s_List https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lev_Landau#Landau.27s_List
  - csa 11y ago
    I suggest checking out the blog at https://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/ https://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/. He has written a ton of stuff about VCs, programmers, etc. His riffs on the Gervais Principle are really good. He followed that up with some other gold. The scale-of-10 stuff is his concept of how there is a mismatch of skill and power in the tech business world -- particularly between the programmer and the business folks. For example, highly-rated business people don't even work in tech -- they do other finance like private equity or hedge funds. That means that most of the top VCs are maybe 7s, and they're bitter about their relatively low status among their B-school peers. That also means that the top tech people (the 10s) struggle to find business people who are their equivalent of awesomeness. This is a short summary.. read the original stuff on the blog. Some folks on HN do not like MO, so they seem to downvote him out of principle rather than based on the content. While I think that his tone can be terse at times (it seems to have gotten better in the past year or so), the content is often frighteningly spot on. I think that this makes some people uncomfortable.

malchow 11y ago

I disagree -- undergrads at Stanford are smart -- smarter than my coevals when I was an undergrad -- and indeed more world-smart. But they are not really brilliant at identifying markets, and are not brilliant at knowing their own weaknesses. These blind spots cohere across the elite undergrad landscape. These are two things that intelligent investors can do very well.