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Comment by jacques_chester | Hacker News Reader

I appreciate that Mark Suster is upfront in saying he's only interested in the correct pedigree. Even the "wrong" pedigree is a recognisable pedigree.

The rest of us don't exist.

(Edit: a better phrasing might be "the rest of us are not found in his taxonomy, possibly because it would muddle the discussion")

Which, given his position, is understandable. VCs can lean on brutally inefficient filters, since they get so many opportunities to recover from lossy rejections. And on the flipside, they can't afford to drown in lossy acceptances. C'est la vie.

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If you don't have the pedigree, go get it. Become that Stanford masters student, or go work at Google or Facebook for a few years. Then when dingbat investors like Suster ask for pedigree, just namedrop Google.

Of course, keep in mind that Suster himself doesn't have the right pedigree (he studied econ at UCSD and got an MBA from Chicago). Then again, maybe that's why he has a shitty portfolio (Upfront is certainly no Sequoia).

> If you don't have the pedigree, go get it.

I am fortunate to be in a position where I can.

But on the whole, it is probably cheaper (in time, money and stress) to find different investors than to go to Stanford.

sure it's not all-ivy harvard college + wharton but ucsd + booth will get you many VC meetings from the top tier names, based on my personal experience trying to raise funds for a previous startup.

i think the fact that mark suster has successfully raised and sold multiple times w/ the pedigree crowd ... sort of confirms that, doesn't it?

ucsd is fairly pedestrian, but chicago booth is ranked by usnwr the #2 business school in the nation, after harvard and tied with stanford... if you don't consider that a good pedigree i'm not really sure what to say.

> I appreciate that Mark Suster is upfront in saying he's only interested in the correct pedigree.

I didn't read it in such black & white terms. More like: If your team is uniquely qualified to solve the problem you're working on, you should lead with that.

At the very least, spend some time refining a story about why whatever background you have actually is the perfect pedigree for what you're working on.

I'm human. I read things through a lens partly composed of gall.

In an early draft of my comment I thought about emphasising that it's a showdown between two strawpeople, which leaves most of the rest of us guessing where we fit.

Mark Suster is upfront in saying he's only interested in the correct pedigree

It doesn't seem to be true. Especially considering this is a long series of posts covering the pedigree first but then also the pitch, presentation, demo, and so on.

Having gone through them, yes, the full series greatly attenuates the effect.

But I still think there was an effect to be attenuated.

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