How to put a VC in the hot seat | Hacker News Reader

How to put a VC in the hot seat

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67 pointsrbedi18 comments

You stand a very good chance of looking dumb if you walk into a real VC's office and ask if they're accredited.

A "real VC" is unlikely to be a "relatively new investor".

If they call themselves a "venture capital firm" then there's no game theoretic win to asking if they're accredited. If they aren't, they can't invest anyways, so hot-seating them is dumb.

Agree. Also the other questions are reasonable, but not heat inducing.

To be fair he qualified the questions with "When the ball is in your court..." So the assumption here is that the founder has leverage.

Those are good questions if I was sitting next to one in a bar and starting up a conversation maybe but since most of the questions can be answered on the VC's web site (including lists of companies they have already funded), in an interview I would concentrate on discussing my proposal.

An investor invests in the jockey and not the horse. Consider an investor like the saddle. If the saddle sucks, the horse and the jockey’s groin will be sore.

This metaphor hurts my head. A saddle invests in a jockey?

I think the idea is that the investor is there to support a talented jockey (entrepreneur) against the turbulence of the horse (new business). Maybe this horse got outraced by another horse/jockey, but if the investor should have faith that the jockey can pick up the saddle and learn how to ride a new horse.

Agreed, not the best analogy... especially because as I understand a lot more is invested in horses than jockeys (in actual competitive horse racing). But, I think that's the point.

Also, I hate to think why the horse's groin would also be sore.

Read the VC's website first to answer as many of these questions as you can, and if you have remaining questions then ask those. But asking "When where you founded?" to a VC may only show you didn't do your homework.

I strongly disagree with this post on two different levels.

For one thing, starting out on a relationship with a potential future investor by looking for ways to put them in the hot seat doesn't feel like a success path for me. They will always be able to make things a lot hotter for you than the other way around ... so why go there?

Secondly many the specific questions would go better in a post called "how to give a VC an impression that you don't bothered to prepare for meetings". When were they founded? It's on their web site. What's their background? Oh, that's on their web site too. Why haven't you done your homework?

If by "hot seat" you mean "position from which to comfortably reject your pitch" then I think you're on to something.

@pg: Please include subdomains in the link descriptions with Tumblr-hosted articles.

There's no subdomain - OP used a tumblr.com/XXXX shortener

Interesting; normally, shortened URLs are converted to their 301 destination on HN, but the same does not apply to Tumblr. Hence my confusion.

Thanks for pointing it out.

Also a problem with GitHub hosted blogs.

Half of these are usually publicly available, and therefore homework.

ya i don't think any of these questions are going to put a VC in the hot seat...

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