
Venture Capitalists, who are these freaks? - openfly
http://www.music-piracy.com/?p=220
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grellas
"Venture Capitalists, who are these freaks?"

Answer: These are the freaks who took a nascent computer industry once
dominated by a few mega-companies and, beginning some 40 years ago, made
possible something that we today know as a "startup" by which young and
otherwise untested whippersnappers might avail themselves of their capital in
order to build vast new enterprises that have managed to transform all of
world commerce and who, with their capital, built such a tremendous
infrastructure in what we know today as the internet that young and untested
whippersnappers can presume to launch new ventures under the illusion that no
capital of any kind is required or, if it is, it can be so minimal as to come
solely from a few friends or family members. These freaks are really nobodies
in the grander scheme now that we have moved into an era where risk capital is
no longer required to launch and build startups and where every young and
untested whippersnapper will be more than willing to put up that $100K or
$200K of his own money to take that whirl with some new and untested concept
to see if it will fly. And if that young and untested whippersnapper should
lose his money in taking that whirl, it is really no loss because only
soulless people care when they lose money while those who are above mere money
are too busy having fun.

I'm sorry - I would hardly classify myself as a sycophant for venture
capitalists or other investors (my specialty is representing founders and
their early-stage companies) but this piece is really beyond the pale. Freaks?
Soulless? This really is pure garbage, whatever good points are otherwise
hidden within the broad ideas that founders can and do benefit from managing
their talents and resources wisely so as to lessen or avoid dilutive hits from
taking in investment money unwisely. Whatever might be good here is, for me,
lost among what I see as a mean-spiritedness in the presentation.

~~~
ableal
> I see as a mean-spiritedness

Let me offer an outside perspective. I see VCs in a role similar to horse
breeders - they pick a few foals, groom them, and are quite dispassionate
about pushing ahead the winners and disposing of the others.

Can't quite blame the young bucks for some kicking and biting when a strange-
smelling outsider approaches them with a rope and saddle.

(shouldn't have watched all those westerns ...)

------
_delirium
I assume good ones know the culture well enough to avoid doing so, but there
_are_ people who show up to hackathons with pretty thinly diguised interest in
scoping out investments. It can be weird when people are purely talking tech
and side-projects and whatnot, and one guy is sort of hovering around
conversations out of business interest. Though, to be fair, it's quite
possible the most obvious ones are would-be VCs and angels rather than actual
ones.

edit: comic <http://www.flickr.com/photos/progrium/2126533900/>

~~~
lsc
eh, I guess I don't really mind them hanging out, I mean, I'm not interested
in what they have, but others are. My problem is that they seem to have the
attitude that everyone wants to talk to them.

Having angels at hackathons is fine, maybe even good. The problem is when
angels become (or act as if they are) the centre of hackathons.

I remember not so long ago I was at a kinda business oriented hackathon and I
couldn't get this angel to leave me alone. I mean, okay, I talked at first,
but after realising that he was only interested in something that would sound
good on CNN (which is to say, he wasn't interested in anything realistic, or
at least nothing realistic that I was capable of doing) I lost interest.

It was like trying to talk to someone who was stoned. He said things that
sounded deep, like they were 'big ideas' but if you pinned him down and dug
into the details, there was no actual content.

The guy wouldn't leave me alone, even though I was being fairly direct about
"not interested, working" both verbally and non-verbally. It didn't help that
my partner liked talking to the guy, I assume because of the money.

Really, if the guy wanted to sit behind me and watch, that'd have been fine.
It was the talking to me, /after/ I made it clear I wasn't interested in
talking to him that bothered me.

~~~
anamax
> It was the talking to me, /after/ I made it clear I wasn't interested in
> talking to him that bothered me.

You should have charged him. Or insisted on a term sheet before you started
talking.

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CapitalistCartr
As time goes by, we need angel investments for fewer and fewer startups. The
cost more often is within the reach of founders own (or parent's and friend's)
pockets. People like me need business savvy advisers more than money.
Investors who bring only money to the table get less useful every year.

~~~
braindead_in
Only for web startups I would say. Things are very different in hard,
enterprise software business.

~~~
adaugelli
Still for most startups - though outside the realm of this board - cleantech,
life sciences, and enterprise hardware startups still require major VC and PE
backing over their life cycle.

For example - Better Place - a provider of Electric Car Service Stations just
raised a $350 MM Series B with HSBC as the lead investor. HSBC doesn't bring
management expertise - but they did bring $150 MM of investor dollars.

------
joshu
I wonder if this is like that thing where you insult people to get them to
talk to you.

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ergo98
Can also be read as: "VCs and angels, please notice me!"

Also: "I was there!"

