From FirstRound: The UNFunded

It pains me to admit when I’ve been had.  The UnFunded ”launch” struck a chord, and since I am 3 hours behind Josh, the 9:30P post on 3/31 (for me) did not set off the “APRIL FOOLS” warning bells that it should have.  Well done joke, and we can admit that we were fooled.

However, I do want to take this opportunity to address one of the points Josh brings up: the level of mistrust between the VCs and the entrepreneurs.  He’s right.  There’s a vast, and I mean VAST, divide between the two.  With the democratization of information, abundance of capital, and decreased marginal costs of company production, it should come as no surprise that the tricks of VC days of old are coming back to haunt them.  I myself have been in three separate VC funded businesses.  I’ve done the money raising.  If VCs want to know what’s killing their business, I will let them in on a little secret:

It’s not your partners…it’s the lower level gate keepers.  They are douches.Your junior folks mistake checkbooks for IQ points, and have no incentive to take risk or champion a cause.  Instead, they drag things out, asking ridiculous questions so as to appear smart, and to delay of course, and more often than not, have never, ever been on the other side of the table.  As such, the empathy levels aren’t there.   Neither is the respect; in either direction.

We speak to a lot of entrepreneurs, and hear more and more “fuck VCs.”  It wouldn’t at all surprise me if Josh’s business is booming, because they are small, early investors, staffed by people who have been there and done that.  I don’t know him personally, but we are separated by one degree, and he’s a smart guy.  Smart enough even to fool me. :P