Also: during our fundraising, we faced a number of the "Monday pitch meetings" -- this is where you've gone through the early crap talking with VC's and are invited in to pitch to the partners. It's typically the last step before an offer. a16z's partner meeting was, by far, the most tech-savvy and aware group. It seems obvious that VC's would understand the technology they're investing in, but honestly, that's often not the case. We faced a lot of brand-name VC firms that couldn't understand what we were working on. We'd get a sense of that and quickly adjust our pitch to focus on what they could understand.
For those asking "Why give them so much credit when they're just doing their job?" -- there are special occasions when a startup's interests and its investors' interests are not aligned. The first big opportunity for a VC to mess with you is the period between a letter of intent and closing the round, when all the smaller details come up and are negotiated. a16z was excellent in the process and we closed quickly without issue.
A later possibility of disagreement is what ar7hur describes here, and here's why it happens: VC's have zero risk aversion and aim to maximize expected value in dollars, which is what you'd want as an investor in the VC. But especially if you're a first-time founder, your dollar-to-utility curve is anything bit linear. Most humans wouldn't trade $5 million for a 1-in-10 chance at $100 million. This discrepancy is the source of a lot of possible problems. How VC's behave during both subsequent rounds and possible exits is perhaps the most important measure of them from a founder's perspective.
tl;dr very happy with a16z and Chris Dixon.
As an outsider, I'm curious as to how bad the VC situation is in SV that doing your job is called out as exceptional. How common are the "Russ Hanneman's"?
The VC situation _outside_ of SV is generally considered much worse as far as I know. Such that characters in the HBO show would be depressingly accurate or even lightened up a bit.
There are great investors everywhere, but "a deal with the devil" can be the nature of most VC investments if you're not lucky/careful (disclaimer, 2nd/3rd hand)
Anecdotes like this help quell that fear a bit, even if wrongly.
To me, this seems like saying that removing the batteries from your smoke alarm will help you sleep, even through house fires.
My parent comment received 14 upvotes and was ranked as the top response for the 4 hours after posting it.
Then, in the span of one hour, every other comment reply received enough upvotes to displace my parent comment. Even, "Thank you for sharing this".
Is there a way to call @dang over? It makes me sad that HN is being gamed.
(1) commenting on voting on comments is off topic;
(2) insinuating astroturfing is not ok;
(3) you should email us instead: hn@ycombinator.com.
Re #1: a moderator correctly marked your comment off topic. That lowers its rank. Re #2: I looked at the upvotes. There's no trace of abuse that I can see. People are far, far too quick to assume manipulation when the truth is simply that large subsets of the community like different things. That's why we have that guideline.