The significant other won't tell you why they cheat on you, the employer won't tell you why they picked that other guy / gal. Your grandma doesn't know why you're her favorite grandkid.
And one of the absolutely solid reasons why I am against investors providing a reason why they turned you down. Most of the time its a fake reason leaving the startups to drop everything and fix this "problem" that never even existed in the first place.
Idk if this is a TikTok or HN stat but I read something that's like 80% of people prefer to work with people they like. Can someone link the paper if it's not a figment of my imagination?
The interesting part here is that it's actually a two-sided marketplace. Most investors aren't "impressive" either, and thus they'll often not be able to get into the best deals because they have no value add.
I recently read some reviews of investors in SV. Some name brand investors like Jason Calacanis, Pejman Nozad, and some YC alumnus, are all actually very clueless people, often with acerbic behaviors to boot. In that respect, at least the investor class of Wall Street seems to have a much higher degree of expertise and civility, compared to the buffoons of Silicon Valley.
There’s a lot of cargo-cult mimicry of Steve Jobs and Elon Musk that happens in terms of behavior.
But those guys were product people and to the extent that their low-empathy personalities were beneficial it’s in the fact that they cared about creating things far more than anything else, including other people or money. The phrase “artistic temperament” long predates them for a reason.
But it’s really absurd and counterproductive to try to mimic that personality if what you’re offering is anything other than being the corporate version of an auteur, and if that’s what you were you wouldn’t be mimicking anyone, and you better produce some stunningly consistent results. Lots of these guys think they’re being uncompromising about “their vision” when it’s really just “their vision” of their spot on the Forbes list.
New York is better in part, I would guess, because there’s no false premise that the investor is doing anything other than acting as a conduit for capital. There’s egos too but no one is trying to live up to the standard of “changing the world” or “innovating” or being “the next ___.”
It probably also helps that Warren Buffet is the most successful traditional investor of all time and a model of good behavior.
It reminds me of the saying: "The problem with the asshole-genius trope is it is much easier to emulate being an asshole then it is to emulate being a genius."
There’s something wrong when you are expected to be a “100x” or “1000x” roi as a startup.
So many good ideas and companies go bust once they accept that vulture capital. End up trying to do too much in order to capture a wider market. Unfortunately it ends in a crash and burn once the VC expectations are not met and money dries up.
Value defined reductively as simply monetary value is peak finance brain.
Yes, investors can allocate their resources with the expectation of gain outside the financial realm (but whether or not they have any other sensibilities is a much harder question).
A preoccupation with money (or really any superficial thing) makes dull people, with dull ideas, and ultimately dull impacts.
I would demand the investor have atleast some inkling of humanitarian sentiment that comes from within, and not simply the environment they found themselves born into. Otherwise, you'll end up with a petty tyrant no different than the owner of car dealership.
It’s like job hunting in a way too, they can reject you, but you’re also interviewing them for their resources and fit too. Why shouldn’t I just ignore them if they ignore me? If we do happen to grow to a point where they’ll come crawling back begging to be part of thE nExT rOUnd, isn’t that a signal that I shouldn’t even bother? They did tip their hand first...
I don’t know why I would give them the time of day, same as I would anywhere that rejected me for a job but later had a change of heart.
> Why shouldn’t I just ignore them if they ignore me?
Generally speaking, running a business is an exercise in pragmatism. Rejecting capital simply because they once slighted you is closer to a personal issue for a therapist than anything which belongs in the office. (Also, have you never heard of a happy couple who didn’t hit it off the first time they met?)
Funny how this sentiment is coming from a "PE" "trader", demanding that the pragmatism absolutely needs to be applied in the reverse, to be oh so considerate of the esteemed monied interests, they're fragile, they must not be rejected for any reason... remember, they have the capital!
The poor sod that wants to reapply for a full time role after getting rejected once? The nerve! Who do they think they are!? We are the last word, don't they know? They need to have therapy.
There's a thousand others out there. I'm not going to throw away more of my life to make sure someone with a few more zeroes in their accounts feels seen.
Thanks for your diagnosis, I am cured now. Huge weight off my shoulders.
Was the post you are replying to edited or something? It seems like a reasonable take that boils down to "don't cut off your nose to spite your face" but your response is super angry and indignant like it attacked you and told you to learn your place at the bottom. What am I missing?
> poor sod that wants to reapply for a full time role after getting rejected once? The nerve!
What? No! They should reapply. And the previous denial shouldn’t prejudice their candidacy.
My point is it’s game theoretically inefficient to hold grudges. That’s a personal issue. Rejecting bad actors is good. But a common personality failing—and I am prone to this!—is being stubborn in the face of a pragmatic win-win because of a perceived previous slight. This is true when talking about fundraising or something disagreeable a friend’s partner absentmindedly and unmaliciously once said to you.
<opine>Team is mostly BS. The chances that even a really good investor, who is not actually in the game, can accurately determine an early stage startup's commercial trajectory by magically intuiting from highly condensed summaries of multiple people's multiple decades of nuanced experience, is near zero. Yes, there is insight to be had there, especially at the pointy end of 80/20, but there are far more significant factors in most cases. Long term VCs will tend to overstate the importance of character due to survivor bias (ie. the successful follow-ons are the only founders they really get to know).
IMHO most early stage investment is made based on hunches and hand-waving after doing generalist macro assessments of particular industries or trends. Frequently, faddish. GP's will often do this, raise a fund around it, then associates are sent out to get deal-flow and execute. Many startups will be get selected from an available pool with the established investment theme. This capital is largely sacrificial, and high miss rates are expected.
Where things get serious at the personal level is in the mid to later stages where you start to see bigger figures being moved about and investors want a shepherd for their capital who has proven stable and long haul capable - things like the capacity not to suddenly live beyond their means, lose focus, drop it all and go to Vegas, crash and burn at HR management, or break down at the first signs of difficulty. That said, you also get mechanics being added like tranched deployment and fiscal/management oversight (eg. board seats) which are highly effective at mitigating risk even in a low-trust scenario. Most VCs are early stage and never play at this level.
To put it bluntly: early stage is mostly noise. Mid to later stage, if they want the deal, they'll make it happen. It's your job to be so damn good they can't help themselves.</opine>
