[HN Gopher] Seed investors: the good, the bad and the ugly, from...
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Seed investors: the good, the bad and the ugly, from a founder
       who's been there
        
       Author : adrian_mrd
       Score  : 12 points
       Date   : 2021-11-08 12:53 UTC (2 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (sifted.eu)
 (TXT) w3m dump (sifted.eu)
        
       | xiaolingxiao wrote:
       | In the middle of fund raising right now and talking to many
       | associates, as well as some partners. So an informed discussion
       | would be very helpful. For example, what should we say to VC
       | associates so they can pitch the deal favorably to the partner.
       | 
       | For context, all the funds we're talking to is from warm intro
       | from a fund that's already going to fill the round.
        
       | m_ke wrote:
       | Another good article that I just randomly came across from 2001
       | that still rings true: https://spectrum.ieee.org/an-engineers-
       | view-of-venture-capit...
        
       | polote wrote:
       | > There are varying opinions when it comes to how to handle VC
       | associates -- one of the strongest coming from Paul Graham, who
       | in sum suggests you never take a call with one. It's an opinion I
       | often hear repeated by other founders.
       | 
       | Is that still relevant today ?
       | 
       | What PG said was :
       | 
       | > But an associate is not a VC. They have no decision-making
       | power. And while they may introduce startups they like to
       | partners at their firm, the partners discriminate against deals
       | that come to them this way. I don't know of a single VC
       | investment that began with an associate cold-emailing a startup.
        
         | ralph84 wrote:
         | a16z solved this by making everyone a "partner."
        
         | notahacker wrote:
         | The "in my experience" sounds suspiciously like "in my
         | experience of being extremely well networked with the founders
         | and them being interested in startups my friends and I work
         | with based on our recommendations alone". Yeah, I'm sure
         | partners are more likely to invest in a YC startup or one with
         | a warm intro from a PG-level figure than one their associate
         | stumbled across, but that's not much help if you're not in YC,
         | and you're going to be even more discriminated against if the
         | partners don't know who you are.
         | 
         | I have a hard time believing VCs pay associates to approach
         | founders if their partners never do any deals based on those
         | introductions.
        
       ___________________________________________________________________
       (page generated 2021-11-10 23:01 UTC)