Not all VCs are created equal. We work for quite a few of them and the range of knowledge, connections, personalities, founder friendliness and ethics is quite broad. As a result of that there are VCs that you really don't want to have anything to do with and VCs that it is a pleasure to work with and that go to bat for the founders of the portfolio companies they've invested in with great regularity.
I don't have any particular experience with VCs, but personality-wise the guys at SUSA(Susa? Capitalisation is annoying when it comes to logo vs Twitter) and Homebrew are miles ahead of 99% of the others I've seen, so my first impression is to agree with you.
I don’t have experience to say beyond seed stage, but at seed stage, especially given the explosion in funds, this is most definitely true. Even as a YC startup, VC interactions I’ve had have ranged from “I could give two shits about you” to “I’m a mensch even when I have to say no”. Founders remember who belongs in what camp and talk to each other about such things a lot.
Interesting. I wonder, is there something like a Yelp/Glassdoor for VCs? A site where people can post about their experiences with VCs, how they were helpful (Like you mentioned, some VC may be great for retail tech while others for moonshot ventures), where they were unhelpful. How hands on or hands off the approach they took was, how much they look at investing as a culture of growth rather than a business (both are valid options IMHO) and so on.
Would really help entrepreneurs make the right choice when it comes to approaching investors right. Of course, this can further boil up or down to investment firms rather than individual investors, based on seried of funding etc.
We do this informally for EU VCs, we have a pretty good idea which start-up will match which VC in our network but we have to be careful to maintain our independence so VCs do not start to feel we are pressuring them to make an investment or that we are seen as a 'stamp of approval'.
("we", me and the team of people that I work with).
Because it is a very small world and we're not the (by far) the strongest party in it a negative advice is something I would not do unless there is public evidence that a VC can not be trusted or is unethical.
