
Tit-For-Tat Office Hours with a Seed-Stage VC - lpolovets
https://codingvc.com/tit-for-tat-office-hours-with-a-seed-stage-vc/
======
jdoliner
Glad to see Leo doing this, his fund was an investor in my company so I've
gotten to experience a few rounds of Leo office hours, although we didn't call
them that at the time. He was very helpful and smart in my experience.

On another note the usage of Tit-For-Tat seems a bit weird in this context
since I think it's generally reserved for retaliatory exchanges rather then
beneficial ones.

~~~
lpolovets
Hey Joe! Oops, my bad on the word choice. I read a book on social altruism a
while ago which talked about tit-for-tat in the context of game theory (i.e.
why people do nice things for strangers). I didn't realize the term has a
mostly negative context.

~~~
oddlyaromatic
I think the parent comment is mistaken. I've always heard this used as
referring to exchanges of roughly equivalent things- whereas, "an eye for an
eye" leans negative, "tit for tat" is neither negative or positive. To me it
simply suggests the idea of a balanced exchange.

EDIT: The dictionary, and the historical roots of the term, seem to agree with
the parent though. Maybe I'm just an optimist and never noticed the underlying
connotation of violence.

------
lpolovets
This is an experiment I've been wanting to run for a while. If anyone has
questions or suggestions, I'd love to hear them.

~~~
drewpc
Sounds like a great idea and wish you the best of luck. I'd love to hear your
thoughts after the sessions. The restriction on "no pitches" makes sense in
that context since it's a pay-it-forward/advice style forum.

How do you think a similar experiment could be conducted that tries to solve
one of the main problems a founder has with raising capital: getting a warm
intro? Advice on a pitch is only helpful if there's someone to listen to the
pitch! Something like office hours as "open auditions" for pitches?

~~~
lpolovets
It varies investor to investor. For reaching investors who only take warm
intros, it's hard for me to help. There are other investors, like me, who
reply to cold emails when they're personalized/well-targeted. Founders don't
need any kind of audition to talk to the second investor group... they just
need to send a relevant email (i.e. not "Dear Sir or Madam, here's a form
letter about my company that I'm bcc'ing to 50 investors..")

------
papercruncher
Had a chance to have a 1:1 with Leo a few years back. We chatted mostly about
technical topics around building analytics platforms in-house with limited
resources. He offered really good advice and was extremely generous with his
time. Even if you just need a sounding board, I recommend that you take him up
on this offer.

------
CalChris
I've enjoyed your writing and so yeah, I'll do this.

However I do have one question. Why Caltech? Going to Caltech for computer
science seems like becoming a Navy SEAL in order to work as an aerobics
instructor. I suppose you could do that but it does seems like overkill.

~~~
lpolovets
I originally decided to go to Caltech because I loved math and science and
thought I wanted to be a math major. I ended up "pivoting" to CS pretty
quickly. I never had any plans of entering venture capital -- it just happened
by circumstance.

------
joshu
I have been thinking about doing office hours for a while. The proper hacker
spirit would be to do it at like 10pm at Happy Donuts in Palo Alto.

------
fnbr
Really cool to see Leo doing this. If he ever moves to an online version of
this, I'll be the first to sign up. Huge fan of his blog.

------
uiri
> * Founders assume VCs don't work during the holidays, so they don't try
> setting up pitch meetings. As a result, VCs don't have any work to do and
> end up going on vacation. =\

This is interesting. I wonder if founders who ignore this assumption would
have better success raising money. At the very least, they'll have more
attention from the VC during their meetings.

~~~
lpolovets
It's probably a wash. For the VCs that aren't on vacation, you likely have a
higher chance of getting a meeting since their schedules are emptier. But the
decision-making bar generally won't move up or down much regardless of how
much free time investors have.

------
saycheese
>> "If this experiment is successful, I'm open to online office hours in the
future."

Agree that in person is better for a number of reasons, but is there any
reason not to allow the slots to be filled by online/voice meeting if you
can't fill the slots with in person meetings?

~~~
lpolovets
My two reasons: 1) I don't have an office near where I live, so I plan to have
the meetings at a local cafe (not ideal for online/phone meetings). 2) If this
works well I'm totally open to online in the future.

------
wasd
Hey Leo, is this best suited for 1 on 1 or a team (say 2) of cofounders?

~~~
lpolovets
1:1 or 1:2 would both be fine. I think this format is best suited for one
startup at a time though -- I suspect 20 minutes should be enough to have an
interesting conversation about 1-2 things, but probably not 1-2 things about
each of 2 different companies.

