"which was more like 7-10 VC firms giving meaningless "yes, soon!"" In theory by doing that they were raising the potential price for those that would end up i

"which was more like 7-10 VC firms giving meaningless "yes, soon!"" In theory by doing that they were raising the potential price for those that would end up investing. Their competitors. If you felt you had "plan b's" you'd be less likely to lower your expectations on value than you would be if you had 7 firm rejections. 7 firm rejection might mean "take what we can get". Here is an example using car buying. If a car is sitting on the lot and has nobody expressing any interest the dealer may possibly want to unload the car and take whatever he can get. Otoh if the dealer feels that he has 2 or 3 people interested in the same car he will then be less likely to take a "short" deal from the 4th person who walks into the dealership. He will feel there is potential and it is worth the gamble to wait feeling he has a few plan b's. (Forget for a second whether this actually happens with car dealers I am only trying to illustrate the theory of what I call "feeling fat" which I have seen many times in business). Of course as a group it's hard to explain why all participants would act this way or that this even happens. However I don't feel individually they are disadvantaged by this behavior at all. While there might be a reputation disadvantage to stringing someone along unless they are absolutely sure they will not invest why not string someone along?