
We'll Be Circling Back - craigkerstiens
http://paulgraham.com/circling.html
======
edw519
From: edw519

To: Paul Graham

Hi Paul,

Thanks for your note and sending ?investor? our way, we really appreciate it
and always enjoy meeting with YC followers. Keep 'em coming!

We loved ?investor? and are impressed by both his pedigree and the portfolio
he has assembled thus far. It's exciting to see investors seeking "real-world"
opportunities in important areas, which aligns well with our long-tail world
view.

However it's currently a little early for us to get sidetracked here. We'd
like to see ?investor? show a few more exits and demonstrate a more complete
core understanding of our market. We've offered to introduce him to a few
value-add founders within our network, who we think could really help him work
through and grasp some of the technological issues fundamental to achieving a
product/market fit in our industry. We plan on keeping in close touch and will
be iterating back once he's at a more appropriate point to deserve equity from
those who have worked so hard.

On a separate note, I feel like we could be doing more to help YC groupies.
We're amazed at what people want to throw money at and we'd love to grab a
coffee and talk more about how we could help investors better understand the
opportunities we've poured so much of our hearts and souls into.

Best,

edw519

~~~
samiur1204
I got in just 27 minutes before you:
<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5371322> ;P

------
Arjuna
_"we'd love to grab a coffee"_

I couldn't help but chuckle at this as Harj even included the concept of
"grabbing coffee", which is discussed in "Maker's Schedule, Manager's
Schedule" [1]:

"Business people in Silicon Valley (and the whole world, for that matter) have
speculative meetings all the time. They're effectively free if you're on the
manager's schedule. They're so common that there's distinctive language for
proposing them: saying that you want to 'grab coffee,' for example.

Speculative meetings are terribly costly if you're on the maker's schedule,
though. Which puts us in something of a bind. Everyone assumes that, like
other investors, we run on the manager's schedule. So they introduce us to
someone they think we ought to meet, or send us an email proposing we grab
coffee. At this point we have two options, neither of them good: we can meet
with them, and lose half a day's work; or we can try to avoid meeting them,
and probably offend them."

[1] <http://paulgraham.com/makersschedule.html>

~~~
cookiecaper
Not to veer too far off-topic, but these "speculative meetings" are often (but
not always) well worth the schedule disruption, even if it ripples out across
several extra "productive" hours. Perhaps for Paul Graham, who has all the VCs
in the world scrambling to fund his picks, it's not so important, but for the
little people like you and I, the value of a good network is immense.

Business is primarily a social thing. It always has been, and is no different
today. This is why inferior products can make tons of money.

~~~
mindcrime
There's some interesting discussion around this phenomena on this Quora
question:

[http://www.quora.com/Manners-and-Etiquette/How-do-you-
polite...](http://www.quora.com/Manners-and-Etiquette/How-do-you-politely-
turn-down-someone-who-wants-to-grab-coffee-sometime)

and this follow-up:

[http://www.quora.com/Manners-and-Etiquette/How-do-you-
dodge-...](http://www.quora.com/Manners-and-Etiquette/How-do-you-dodge-being-
politely-turned-down-when-you-want-to-grab-coffee-sometime-with-someone-when-
you-have-meaningful-things-to-talk-about)

I consider both threads to be worthwhile reads.

------
georgeorwell
I might be misreading this, but it seems like PG is humiliating one of his
partners in public.

EDIT: Yep, I was misreading this. It wasn't so clear that it was an inside
joke. I guess the joke's on me and the stereotypical non-partner VC, ha ha?

From Wikipedia:

Harjeet Taggar (born June 8, 1985), is a British businessperson and partner at
the seed-stage investment firm, Y Combinator. He was formerly funded by Y
Combinator and sold his company Auctomatic to Canadian company Live Current
Media at age 22.

In 2010 he was named as the first new partner at Y Combinator since its
founding in 2005, aged 25. In 2011 he was named on the Forbes 30 under 30
list.

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harjeet_Taggar>

~~~
dangrossman
This is mail from Harjeet written as if it's from a VC to a YC partner like
himself. Since Harj is not a VC and is part of YC, he wouldn't write Paul a
mail like that. It's satire.

~~~
geoka9
If it's an inside joke, then it's probably a good idea to explain it as such
instead of downvoting the parent (not everybody on this site is an insider).

~~~
georgeorwell
YC is apparently into inside jokes now:

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5363290> (t-shirt story)

I wonder what that's about, if anything. The last time I really encountered
inside jokes was in high school. It always seemed like some way to establish a
dividing line between cool and uncool people.

~~~
dasil003
Have you never had an inside joke with someone? It's not about exclusion, it's
about connecting with someone else (most of the time anyway).

~~~
mieubrisse
But whether or not the point is exclusion, I don't think you can deny that
inside jokes foster a feeling of isolation for those not in the know.

~~~
lubujackson
Especially when you post it to your very public blog. Who is this post meant
for?

~~~
georgeorwell
It's meant for everyone, from the cool people who got it right away at the A
table where Paul and Harj sit (e.g.
<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5371321> ), right on down to the D table
where people like me and you sit. You can't have popular without unpopular.

 _When we were in junior high school, my friend Rich and I made a map of the
school lunch tables according to popularity. This was easy to do, because kids
only ate lunch with others of about the same popularity. We graded them from A
to E. A tables were full of football players and cheerleaders and so on. E
tables contained the kids with mild cases of Down's Syndrome, what in the
language of the time we called "retards."

We sat at a D table, as low as you could get without looking physically
different. We were not being especially candid to grade ourselves as D. It
would have taken a deliberate lie to say otherwise. Everyone in the school
knew exactly how popular everyone else was, including us._

<http://www.paulgraham.com/nerds.html>

... and the people at the E table are the hellbanned ones like losethos /
SparrowOS, who incidentally might just get up and leave if someone at the A
table told them nobody was allowed to talk to them.

------
Tzunamitom
VCs, management consultants, business gurus... all the same rubbish.

After working in Big 4 management consulting jobs for almost six years, I'm
constantly surprised that phrases like "value-add" and "validate a couple of
the core assumptions" still have the power to bring me out in a cold sweat.

But what is it going to take to end this nonsense? We know we're talking
rubbish. Most of us hate these stock business-speak phrases, yet still most of
us choose to hide behind them. Clients are partly to blame, but an industry
that tries to differentiate itself by the bizarreness of its terminology
(thereby fabricating "exclusivity")is more to blame.

When are we going to wake up and realise that speaking in plain, simple,
understandable English does not make us look stupid and simple. Quite the
opposite.

~~~
tokenadult
Your irony detector needs adjustment. As pg wrote in his introduction to this
letter,

"I sent the YC partners an email saying I was growing increasingly impressed
with one of the startups in the current batch and asking what they thought of
them, and Harj Taggar replied with this brilliant piece of VC boilerplate."

The joke is on the people who think that Taggar was expressing what he thinks,
rather than what he has heard too many venture capitalists say when they
aren't willing to say what they think.

~~~
Tzunamitom
Then the irony is as delicious as a Hacker News T-shirt ;-)

~~~
fgdsfgds
What is ironic about a Hacker News T-shirt?

------
kyro
My only issue with this email is that he used the subject "we" when mentioning
grabbing a coffee. The current accepted standard of phrasing in business
circles eliminates the subject and would read "would love to grab a coffee".

Would love to hear your thoughts on this space.

~~~
yogo
Is that really an accepted standard? I have to go out on a limb here and ask
if that's even a proper sentence? Who/what is the subject? It certainly helps
to know who you would be having coffee with.

~~~
fratis
The subject is an implied first person. (i.e., "I" or "we.")

I see this kind of omission as a way for cowards to avoid explicitly standing
behind their request, both to diminish their own disappointment if the
recipient says no or ignores them and to mitigate the chance that the
recipient perceives their note as 'needy.'

Just my 2¢.

~~~
rumcajz
I was wondering about this construct several times in the past.

AFAIK English is not a pro-drop language, which means that the construct
should be ungrammatical.

My impression was that it was introduced to American English be immigrants
with pro-drop native languages (Italians? Slavs?) Am I completely off track?

~~~
jholman
It depends on whether you think "ungrammatical" means "not approved of by
prescriptivists", or you mean "not used and/or not understood by fluent
speakers".

Given that you know the word "pro-drop", I assume you know this, and I'm not
sure if I should bother continuing in this vein. Maybe you're asking for a
descriptive grammaticality judgement from fluent English speakers?

I agree that from a prescriptivist perspective, this is improper formal
writing.

From a descriptivist perspective, I try to avoid biz guys, but I suspect the
GP post nailed it, with respect to common usage in the appropriate sociolect
(the same sociolect that has "proof points", "value-add", "circling back",
etc). Although maybe not for the last sentence of an email that already had
that much circumlocution.

~~~
Evbn
Ungrammaticality changes over time. For a new grad emailing her boss, douchy
pro-dropping in English is ungrammatical. Eventually, it sinks in as an
acquired taste, and becomes grammatical.

Hey, is it ungrammatical to call a woman Douchy?

------
kevinalexbrown
I... I hope I'm not ruining it by asking if this is a test to see how the HN
comments respond to subtlety?

<strike>I suppose that's part of the joke, though like some good jokes it
makes me sad. We get upset that VC's respond with boilerplate and knee-jerk,
but then we do the same thing.</strike>

Update: egh, looks like we're not doing too badly.

~~~
Mahn
> We get upset that VC's respond with boilerplate

Even if it sounds impersonal and lazy, this is just called being polite, most
people still prefer an answer of this kind to "lol no, sorry, you suck". And
that's why we do it aswell. Perhaps we should work more on make it seem less
impersonal, but the message is clear and loud in any case.

~~~
batgaijin
Dude I would take a cut to have someone as a vc who said "lol no, sorry, you
suck." I mean jesus christ these are the last people we want patting our egos.

~~~
soneca
Not me, I like people being polite with me. Which doesn't mean these messages
couldn't be more informal and direct. But "you suck" is not impersonal, is
rude.

I have my ego pretty much under control, exagerated compliments won't do any
damage here.

~~~
RougeFemme
Agreed. I would rather rate boilerplate than rate no response at all.

~~~
mbetter
Great comment.

------
antirez
Brillant, and there is a common denominator across all this kind of
communications: _there is no real information_ , so after some practice it's
easy to spot it's just bullshit. Btw this style is not just common to VCs, but
also to clueless management.

~~~
rrrrtttt
Here's what I gleamed from the message: 1\. Taggar doesn't want to invest in
the company. 2\. He wants Graham to keep referring other companies to him. 3\.
He may want to invest in the company in the future. 4\. He introduced the
founder to some of his acquaintances (see 2).

The writing is pretty much WYSIWYG...

~~~
antirez
Yes but, what is the value added by the people they want to get involved? Why
is too early to invest? Just because there are not already a zillion of users
and they are not able to evaluate? Why later it could be interesting?

Basically there is just boilerplate to say "no thanks" but no real
information. Just a general feeling that they are not able to really evaluate.

~~~
numbsafari
I don't know the guy, but... consider the power dynamic. PG sends him a sales
pitch and the guy pushes back. What's he supposed to do, fall all over himself
and say "where do I sign"?

No, he says, "yeah, maybe".

Wouldn't you do the same if someone came to your door looking to sell you
something?

~~~
derefr
> Wouldn't you do the same if someone came to your door looking to sell you
> something?

My usual reaction is "what else d'ya got?"--until they run out of "else"s.

This way, the situation is reframed as them not having anything I like, rather
than me not being willing to accept what they have--and it's then much easier
to just politely end the conversation.

------
sriramk
Let's look at what a VC is trying to accomplish here.

\- They don't want to invest for reason {X}. Could be as trivial as someone
not liking the founder or they could genuinely think they don't know whether
the company will do well.

\- They don't want to tell the founders what they really think. Mostly because
they want to hold open the option in case they are proven wrong as often
happens. As much as founders say they like honest replies, I've seen so many
founders say "VC X said he doesn't want to invest in us because he disagrees
with us on {reason}- I'm going to prove that moron so wrong".

\- They want to help out the founder with a couple of intros so that the
founder doesn't feel like he got nothing from them in return.

The boilerplate/corporate B.S language? Terrible and everyone could easily do
better. But there's no easy to tell someone you don't believe in something
they're putting their heart and soul into.

YC has the nicest rejection mails of all of VC-land and I've still seen YC-
rejects get really angry and make it their life's work to prove pg wrong.

~~~
eric_bullington
Are you sure these YC-rejects are building their companies just to prove pg
wrong? They are probably just pursuing their dream, which is what led them to
apply to YC to begin with. If they succeed, proving YC wrong is just a nice
side-effect for them (see: <http://lightsailenergy.com/> and others).

~~~
sriramk
Either way, they hold a hostility towards YC ( or anyone who rejects them)
which is what such 'soft letdowns' are trying to mitigate.

~~~
DaniFong
I think YC is great.

------
richardjordan
This is brilliant.

I often wonder of VCs actually have a secret website where they go on it,
select from a half dozen drop boxes of platitudes they want to include, and
then out spits a message along these lines. Over the years my inbox has
gathered enough of them that I could probably extract most of the patterns.

~~~
dsl
Have you considered you're doing it wrong? If you asked out 100 girls and they
all blew you off, it would be time for some introspection. VCs are just ugly
girls with more money.

~~~
orangethirty
Eh, no. I would take a bath, put on some _nicer_ clothes, and set out to find
girl 101.

    
    
        while single:
            mingle()

------
vu0tran
How many users do you have? Do you have traction? Is it viral? Who else has
invested in your startup? Did Sequoia pass? Why did Sequoia pass?

[Explain how your startup will make 90 billion dollars in the first year]

I'm sorry, I've already invested into too many companies, but if you know any
other Y Companies, I would love to speak to them.

~~~
kirillzubovsky
Vu, try this: "Hi. What are other companies in your batch we should invest
in?" <\- seriously, first question. I think our conversation ended shortly
thereafter.

------
jholman
For those in various sub-threads arguing that this is simply polite, what's
wrong with the following email?

\-------------

Hi Paul,

Thanks for your note and sending ⟨startup⟩ our way, we really appreciate it
and always enjoy meeting with YC founders. Keep 'em coming!

I see a lot of promise there, but it's not enough for us yet. We've offered to
introduce ⟨founder⟩ to a few useful contacts.

As always, we value Y Combinator, and we appreciate this and future
opportunities to invest, and to help YC companies. Our calendar is always open
for coffee or whatever.

\--jholman

\-------------

It's half the length. But it's still polite, appreciative, etc.

I guess it depends on what the sender thinks of the recipient, with respect to
narcissism and self-importance, and what kind of sucking up is predicted to be
effective. When I read plausible sucking-up, I feel gratified. When I read
implausible sucking-up, I feel manipulated.

~~~
JDGM
I like this. I live in a country where exaggerated politeness is deeply
ingrained, and redundant over-explanation common. I've been here long enough
that it's rubbed off on me to where the original spoof message didn't really
ring any alarm bells. Your rewrite is natural English without the BS. The only
change I would make if I wrote it myself would be taking out "or whatever". I
blame the fashion for that word to be used on its own disrespectfully - my
brain often reads it as the British "wha'ever", or the US "whatEVVVVAAAARRRR".

------
will_brown
This is really funny, because it is not far off from the "boilerplate"
responses YC sends out to rejected YC applicants.

>We're sorry to say we couldn't accept your late application for funding.
Please don't take it personally. The chances of a late application being
accepted are much lower than for an application submitted by the deadline.

If you want to apply again for the summer 2013 cycle, the application form
will probably be online within a few weeks.

Unfortunately we can't give you individual feedback about your application.
This page explains why:

<http://ycombinator.com/whynot.html>

Another reason you shouldn't take this personally is that we know we make lots
of mistakes. We have good statistical evidence that we fail to interview a
significant number of startups that we'd accept if we did.

We're trying to get better at this, but it's practically certain that groups
we rejected will go on to create successful startups. If you do, we'd
appreciate it if you'd send us an email telling us about it; we want to learn
from our mistakes.

Remove "We should grab coffee" to "apply again" and "We'll be Circling Back"
to "if We rejected you and you become successful, email us about it". In the
case of the VC if I raise funding from another VC and you rejected me do you
think I would let them "circle back around"?; or in the case of YC you think
if my start-up becomes a billion dollar success I am really going to waste my
time explaining to YC in an email where they went wrong rejecting me?

~~~
daniel-cussen
Having read that and two college rejection letters, I'd say they went as far
as they could in an email that was ostensibly a reply-to-all.

------
samiur1204
Hi Craig,

Thanks for your post and sending ⟨link⟩ our way, we really appreciate it and
always enjoy reading about We'll Be Circling Back. Keep 'em coming!

We loved We'll Be Circling Back and are impressed by both it's background and
the statement it makes. It's exciting to see entrepreneurs tackling "real-
world" problems in important areas, which aligns well with our hacker
interests.

However it's currently a little early for us to make a comment here. We'd like
to see We'll Be Circling Back show a few more proof points and validate a
couple of the core assumptions underlying the post. We've offered to introduce
it to a few hackers, within our network, who we think could really analyze it
and shape some of the strategic issues it'll face in the coming months. We
plan on keeping in close touch and will be circling back once it's at a more
appropriate stage for commenting.

On a separate note, I feel like we could be doing more to help Hacker News
posters. We're in awe of what you've built over there at the Hacker News
posting and we'd love to grab a coffee and talk more about how we could be
helpful to both the posts and you.

Best,

Samiur

------
mikecuesta
I was totally confused reading through this the first time - it made me roll
my eyes at least 5 times. Then I realized it was satirical and my faith in PG
was once again restored.

------
sama
I laughed so hard when I got this email that I actually spit my coffee out.

------
phil
Did you know? Jokes are much funnier after you explain them.

------
jgrahamc
I'm sure something Bayesian like POPFile could filter that correctly to Trash.

------
OnyeaboAduba
This reminds me of the fearsome chapter in Launch Pad where Paul Graham is
telling the founders of Science Exchange that VCs use any excuse when they
dont like you as a reason not to fund in their case circumvention in this case
"strategic issues and proof points". Which leads into another Paul Graham
quote "Listen to the answer ,dont listen to the reason" Also the investor
couldnt have been more obvious with the fact that the real reason he emailed
Paul was that he wants to get his claws in YC on a deeper level " keep em
coming" "on a seperate note we feel we could be doing more to help YC
companies" on a seperate note? really? Paul is a veteran at the VC game so
trying to bait and switch him with all the "we loved him and where impressed
but" nonsense is crazy to me. But its one of his partners so it might be just
a simulation of the dozens of emails he gets like this on a daily basis

------
quintin
Hi X,

It’s been wonderful talking to you. We are pretty amazed by your team’s ___
chops and xxx.

We talked about the opportunity briefly during our meeting and would like to
see a more fuller team and strategy around the product before getting into a
deeper relationship.

Congrats on an incredible product and let me know if we would be any help to
you along the way.

 _If you get it_

------
wamatt
So it's obviously satire, and I'm a huge PG/YC supporter, although consider
this: PG (through the voice of another YC faithful) is in a way attacking the
"dullard VC", lampooning them for being formulaic and unimaginative.

But, in a sense he too is using subtlety to obfuscate the real message and the
reader is left to fill in the blanks. It's probably meant in good humor, but
usually there is a little truth and sore feelings behind these sort of jests.

Now maybe the VC's are arrogant or whatever, although this does seem like tit-
for-tat in my book.

I'll go out on a limb here and say I don't think YC-style is going to "take
over" and obliterate the traditional VC model, nor do I believe traditional
VC's should dismiss YC-style investing as chump-change or unimportant.

------
DanielBMarkham
There are a zillion things I do not understand about startups.

But one thing I know: never use investors. You're better off trading the next
Facebook for an 8-figure startup and just not putting yourself through any of
it.

------
programnature
I don't know what's funnier - the link, or the clueless hacker news people!

------
contango
You know, I don't actually find this offensive, and it ranks fairly low on the
comedic value scale for me.

He is essentially saying "I'm not interested right now, but I might be in the
future. I don't want to tell you why. I respect you and wish to be polite and
leave the door open to future discussion"

Sure, the message is padded out and business bullshitty/flowery (depending on
your POV), but it doesn't give me the willies..

------
bjornsing
Reminds me of that parody of a VC guy telling siri to "clear out my inbox with
wishy-washy responses to everything":
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4WZA0TATcEI>. This is what he means by wishy-
washy reponses. :)

------
graycat
Yes, it was a brilliant parody, send up, etc. of standard venture partner
communications, especially when they are loquacious but really saying "No".

The main point is, they are keeping hidden what they are really thinking.
Right: They like the project and the founder, the connection with "real world"
problems, etc. All total BS. They want more "proof points" -- mostly BS.

What they don't want to do is what the founder had to do -- deeply evaluate
the promise of the project now.

What they really want to see they didn't mention but is in one word,
significant and rapidly growing 'traction'.

What's going on? The venture partner is working for his limited partners, and
they think much like traditional private equity investors or just commercial
bankers. So, the limited partners really want their venture partners to make
financial investments only in measurable financial assets. The limited
partners would greatly prefer there to be audited financial statements, but in
a pinch they will let their venture partners settle for a surrogate measure,
'traction', from, say, Comscore or some such.

If a venture partner is especially curious, then they may want to try the app
or Web site. Why? Mostly to keep up their "deep domain knowledge" but
otherwise to evaluate how millions of users might like the app or Web site. If
such an evaluation looks good beyond belief, then they might make a seed
investment.

That's just how the venture capital business works.

Is this narrow focus on 'traction' and essentially ignoring everything else
working? At least on average, over the past 10 years or so, apparently not. Or
as in a recent post at AVC.COM, on average, the venture capital ROI figures
have been significantly less good than an index fund.

The fundamental gap is 'planning': Can we plan a project, execute essentially
the plan, and with high batting average get the intended results of the plan
or at least significantly high ROI? That's the fundamental challenge. And
mostly in venture capital, the answer is "No". That is, the industry does not
take such planning seriously.

Is all such planning so hopeless? No: Quite broadly in our economy and
technology, we can plan and then execute the plan with reasonably high batting
average. Even for projects that appear to be highly technical, original, and
'innovative', there can be some good early evidence of the good or bad
prospects of the project. Project selection is important, and there are means
of selecting good projects with reasonably good batting averages, averages
much higher than in venture capital.

But back to the limited partners: They still want to think like private equity
people or just commercial bankers. They just do. And, instead of changing,
they will pick venture firms more carefully or just invest less in the
'venture capital asset class'.

But just now for the most interesting part of venture capital investing,
'information technology' based mostly on just software, the venture capital
'business model' is under attack: The reason is the recent and astounding
ratios of price and performance for computer hardware and communications
bandwidth and also the powerful infrastructure software available at least
initially essentially for free. So, for a startup based on software,
computing, and the Internet, the path to the coveted 'traction' is just one or
a few guys living cheaply and typing quickly. Then, with such low 'burn rate',
once they get the traction, and especially if their traction is growing very
rapidly, they stand to be nicely profitable already or soon and, thus, no
longer in great need of equity investment and likely reluctant to sign the
usual term sheet and subordinate themselves to a Board controlled by venture
partners. So far this threat to venture capital has not a lot of examples and
maybe no examples of really big wins, e.g., another Facebook, but the threat
is coming like an 80,000 pound 18 wheel truck at 80 MPH just 50 feet away.

~~~
not_that_noob
One of the most lucid, entertaining and CORRECT analyses of the VC industry I
have ever read.

------
return0
TL;DR: No.

On a related note, dilbert has a piece about how most management is basically
BS:
[http://dilbert.com/blog/entry/managementsuccessleadership_mo...](http://dilbert.com/blog/entry/managementsuccessleadership_mostly_bullshit/)

~~~
ebbv
I thought that's been the driving idea behind Dilbert for its entire run.

------
andymoe
So funny. The hilarious thing is some VCs actually talk like that in person
too! Even when they are really just trying to say "Hey, computer guy, stand in
line at the A&TT store for 125 bucks and hour and get me that new iPhone for
me."

------
pratikjhaveri
Awesome! I'm sure there can be a whole series of "typical response
emails"....from Management, from large Co to Tiny Co, from girlfriend to ex-bf
:)

In fact someone should create a Yahoo like auto-memo creator from a few years
back for this precise reason.

------
accountoftheday
How do other founders deal with non-committal VC nonsense? I feel like only
taking targeted meetings where social capital gets spent on introductions to
avoid this takes too much serendipity out of the equation.

------
lyime
Classic.

------
smountcastle
After looking through the comments I'm surprised there's no speculation on the
promising startup that PG reached out to the YC partners about. Any ideas?

------
Hitchhiker
Let me know if we can be of any " other " help.

------
ajju
On the brighter side for VCs, they can just link to this article from now on
instead of typing out a 4-paragraph reply.

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crististm
"grab a coffee and talk " - that rang a bell with something I read this week
on TC

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klinquist
If that's boilerplate, I think he should be <he/she> :)

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tyang
Very helpful, thanks.

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petegrif
Dear Paul and Harj irony falls on deaf ears.

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danbmil99
This is what billionares do for fun?

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hoodoof
Is this a joke?

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petegrif
Haha.

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maeon3
I like getting boilerplate responses from people, it's basically a message to
me: You are worth nothing to me and if I can make a profit by throwing you
under the bus, I will make no hesitation to do so, and you shouldn't expect me
to.

It's actually a refreshing whiff of the jungle. Kill, or be killed.

