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Comment by seiji | Hacker News Reader

Great examples of VCs never saying no directly and of a strange insider be-terse-and-get-out-of-my-way writing style.

Actually he did explicitly say no a few weeks later. Fred is pretty good in that department.

Is it terse or is it just concise?

So many 'business' people think that long waffling sentences seem clever and impressive. Nothing is further from the truth.

This is neither terse nor concise. Terse and concise means you write what you mean. When the VC writes, "we are still in the data-gathering phase", he really means "I see what you are saying, but my gut says no right now. I may contact you in the future when I know more."

This is longer, but it actually means something. Instead of saying that he needs more data in order to make a decision, he's said that he needs more time to make a decision. The data comes natrually.

A "data-gathering-phase" is the phase that everyone is always in about everything. I am currently in a "data-gathering-phase" with respect to whether or not I should make another cup of coffee. My current cup is cold, but still contains liquid. So it's not a sure thing that I should make myself another cup of coffee. On the other hand, hot coffee is nice. I can't decide, so I will continue to gather temperature and flavor data until I make a decision or I spill my coffee.

See how meaningless that is?

I was in data-gathering about coffee until I read that you wanted coffee too. I have asked an associate to bring in some coffee for discussion.

I've completed my data-gathering-phase and need coffee too!

This has gone viral!

Inveeeeeeeeest

i'm in a data gathering phase on this comment thread

You can call it meaningless, but people in the business do understand exactly how it is meant. The way he phrased it just sounds a lot more polite.

Just because people understand businessspeak doesn't mean it's good to use. You would know what I meant if I typed "teh" instead of "the", but we all try to write "the" anyway.

Every niche has it's own lingo. VC's that need to bring the above message across several times a day just don't want to come across as rude or worse. Therefore they use euphemisms of which the messages are perfectly understood by their peers and which leave them as much room as possible (eg. making it easier to come back later and say "finished data acquisition phase -- we are in"). Classic VC play.

In the end, I can somehow understand, and don't find it 'wrong' or 'meaningless' per se.

This is confusing to me. If I'm asking people for money and they don't want to give it to me, I wouldn't really be offended if they said, "the reason I don't want to give you my hard-earned cash is because I think your idea sucks." I wouldn't give someone with an idea that sucked cash either.

This would also not preclude, "you know, I was wrong... still interested in some cash?" It's a business transaction, not dating.

It only does not preclude that if the person who received the message is mature about the whole situation. Unfortunately some people won't be mature, and that is simply not grief that the VC wants.

Furthermore when you come off as rude the first time, you discourage them from asking the second time. What if they come back with an idea that is good, and a team that rocks? Don't close doors that you don't need to close.

Just reminds me of: "Ron wrote back in literally 2 minutes and said, in what I have learned is Ron’s distinctive email style (immediate, short, all caps), “AM ON IT.”" (http://bhorowitz.com/2010/04/07/ron-conway-explained/)

The format seems more IM-over-email than "email where important shit goes down."

That terseness is how Fred writes every email, it's not unique to this thread with Paul. When you try to reply to a couple hundred emails a day, this terseness is the result.

i suspect you have a few of those in your gmail archives to andrew ;)

One or two long ones too :)

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