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Comment by manigandham | Hacker News Reader

> Surely the VC's are performing their due-diligence and there are adults minding the store?

They're not. VC's (especially in SV) are notoriously bad at actually understanding any tech and very easy to trick into delivering large checks. This has been seen countless times.

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uBeam is an interesting case because the problems were pointed out as soon as it was announced.

But then Mark Suster said "hey, our engineers said it's legit, quit your whining!"

https://bothsidesofthetable.com/the-audacious-plan-to-make-e...

Suster keeps talking about it being safe because they put sound-waves into pregnant women's bellies ... the FDA actually regulates how much power can be sent, and those probes require direct (usually gel coupled) contact with the target.

Sound waves can definitely damage flesh.

I used to be puzzled by this, but then I listened to an episode of A16z podcast and realized that these guys use Microsoft Office, Facebook, Twitter, and Medium all day long——in other words, they're typically not people who understand bleeding-edge technology except in a pop-science-article-in-wired-mag sense.

and what does using microsoft office, facebook, twitter, and medium have to do with not understanding bleeding-edge technology?

Fair question. On the episode that I listened to, they were proclaiming that the iPad Pro has replaced the need for a desktop/laptop because it does everything that they need to do.

Conspicuously absent from the list of things that an iPad Pro can do is writing code in any sane kind of development workflow. The idea that an iPad Pro could satisfy my everyday work needs is so foreign to me that I was shocked by how cursory and superficial their technology immersion really is. They need 'desktop publishing' tools, at best.

I'm not claiming that a person who spends all day using Excel and Powerpoint and WhatsApp (and not Vim/Emacs/Sublime/IDE) is incapable of having a nuanced understanding of bleeding edge tech. But I am going to claim that they most likely have a "dentist's office waiting room magazine" understanding of hard tech, and I'll proudly declare that to be my not-so-expert opinion.

You're making a lot of assumptions. Just because someone doesn't code on a daily basis doesn't mean that person doesn't know about tech. If I were their LP, I would be worried if the VCs were coding. Lastly, being good at predicting the future in terms of technology has very little to do with those little details you mentioned. I see so many developers just focused on learning the next new technology like react, grunt, es6, etc. but never even think about where this is all going, they're just satisfied that they have great skills. Not saying it's a bad thing, I'm saying being very good at technical details and seeing the trend has very little to do with each other and sometimes even contradictory (If your goal is to become the best developer who knows every single new technology, you won't have time to think about other things)

This isn't what we're talking about here.

It's not about seeing where the market is going (which frankly is impossible and is really just trying to catch and ride trends) - but rather about knowing which companies and projects will definitely fail.

Creating a portfolio is getting rid of the NOs and investing in the MAYBEs. And if you can't properly vet the engineering and technology that a company has, you can't tell that it's going to fail. The massive amount of companies that still get checks for an impossible or just bad product clearly shows that these VC firms dont have the right process, talent or method to accurately judge companies.

1. A lot of successful companies started out with super ghetto technology--even the ones that are famous for being very high-tech in the current days.

2. Nobody knows what company will succeed, including the VCs and you and me.

3. It is arrogant to think anyone has any idea what company will be a NO or MAYBE or YES. If you think that's bullshit and it's easy to spot a "NO", it probably means you haven't experienced this before, because I used to think that way too in the past. Then I went to SF and met companies that I thought would surely fail, they were disorganized, founders looked stupid, working on stupid problems, etc., then the next day they become wildly successful. After encountering several of those you become humble.

4. Conclusion: There is no such thing as "process" you're looking for, and that's how it should be because if you're a VC that follows a strict "process", you won't be around in a while. You can't predict anything. VCs are doing whatever they can and I am pretty sure they are statistically better than you and me at it because that's their job. We can say whatever about them but if somebody gave you $100million dollars today and asked you to invest in startups you and me will probably fail much more miserably than any VCs out there. It's not like I'm a VC fanboy, I just don't agree when people criticize others for something that they are not familiar with.

This isn't about tech, if they don't have basic engineering fundamentals then it's not going anywhere. And yes, it's possible to check for NOs. Some companies are easy to see as definite failures. And, if you cant tell... then by definition they become a MAYBE.

Yes, I freely admit that I'm making a lot of assumptions. My personal experience tells me that I'm on the right track, too. YMMV.

It means you're a task automated user with relatively unsophisticated needs.

In an enterprise, that means that you typically use about 8 applications in the course of a year. (Office apps + IE + Adobe + 1 other)

Don't they hire/contract experts to evaluate the technology?

I do due diligence for a living and many VCs at the early stage (seed to A) do very little diligence. When you take a portfolio approach, it's usually not economical to do so for every investment.

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