Pitching VCs? Better know about IBM's latest OS/2 | Hacker News Reader

Pitching VCs? Better know about IBM's latest OS/2

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44 pointsdanielharan35 comments

If I was keen to get (or keep) VC funding, I doubt I'd be in any hurry to tell a VC that he was smoking crack whatever I actually thought.

While I'm probably a little naive, it also just wouldn't occur to me that he was deliberately looking stupid. So my assumption would have to be that he actually thought this was true for some reason. Possible reasons:

1. He misheard something or otherwise confused OS/2 with something else. DB/2 for example. 2. IBM had extracted some bit of technology derived from the OS/2 lineage and were pitching this as the latest and greatest thing.

On this assumption, flat out contradicting him would make him look stupid, and at least be a little rude. So to me this says more about his character (VC who plays games - sounds unpleasant) than it does about that of the people he says it to, other than that they're prepared to dissemble a little to keep an investor happy.

Me, I'd say "Really? Are you sure!?" but I'm not looking for cash.

Right, his take away needs to be that he should create a style of conversation where entrepreneurs feel safe saying "I don't know" or questioning him. He hasn't discovered a flaw in entrepreneurs, just a flaw in his own style at the meetings.

The point isn't for you to tell him he is wrong. You are supposed to admit you aren't familiar with what he is talking about.

The assumption being you will do the same about a real piece if information, instead of pretending to know everything.

Seems unethical for a potential investor to try to trick people like that. Investors are supposed to be partners.

There's no need to anyway. People who don't know what they're talking about usually disqualify themselves quickly enough without any leading questions.

I hope some entrepreneur shoots back, "You're testing how honest and candid I am by being disingenuous."

Investors are supposed to watch out for and grow the money under their trust. If one of them considers that involves throwing in different questions to find out more about the people and/or product asking for his money, I don't see how that is unethical.

We have countless articles on this system that praise alternative approaches to dealing with markets. This post is entirely about part of one individual's alternative approach.

If one of them considers that involves throwing in different question to find out more about the people and/or product asking for his money, I don't see how that is unethical.

Maybe that's clearer if we use a description more precise than "throwing in different questions:" lying.

Even if one takes an amoral view of it, there is a risk that the people you were investing in will now waste time investigating a non-existent technology.

Or that they will incorrectly discount things that you say in the future. But then that's one of the reasons that lying is so often a bad strategy in the first place.

I think they'd pretty quickly find out that Arthur Andersen is effectively a defunct entity. I suppose it is an "in joke" like the "thousands of case studies" part of his question.

You are correct that some time, though probably not too much, would be wasted in discovering the above. I do see your point.

I felt that was part of the author's point too; "lying is so often a bad strategy". Perhaps the common ground between our approaches to the article is that he should not be surprised that his bullshit question elicited a bullshit response.

It's seems unethical for a potential investee to try and trick people that like. They are supposed to be partners!

Agreed. But all the people who said "Yeah, my CTO was telling me about that" are also lying, and trying to trick the investor. It goes both ways.

Very amusing, I'm sure.

Let's look at it from the other perspective. You're in a meeting with someone you want money from (and maybe someone you even respect). Your whole mindset for the meeting is that you should come across as knowledgeable and confident. He says something that confuses you. His tone of voice says "Even my grandmother knows this, if you don't you're an idiot, and my money and I are out of here". It might cross your mind that he's a VC and deals with a much broader range of the tech landscape than you, focused on your startup for the last year. You might even get as far as thinking "OS/2? I thought that was ancient, but what do I know about the enterprise field, maybe they renamed some $500,000 product as OS/2?"

You have a split second to decide what to say. Do you:

a) Say something that means "Sorry Mr. VC, but you are completely clueless about technology"

b) Ask for clarification for a topic which doesn't really seem relevant

c) Try to smooth over what to you is an awkward bump in the conversation

b) seems like the optimal choice, but I couldn't really blame anyone who chooses c) in the heat of the moment. At any rate, I would be wary of anyone who chooses a).

d) "No, I haven't heard of that"

I guess I would lump that under b).

The human brain is pretty good at filling in details and justifying or explaining inconsistent things. The person who mentioned a Slashdot thread might not even have been lying. There might have been a thread which said "OS2 is old and dead" and another thread, the following day, which said "DB2 is the future of databases," and, in the heat of the moment, talking to someone you're trying to impress, the brain put the two together and delivered up an attempt to cope with a strange question.

This phenomenon is by no means unique to entrepreneurial pitches. I see this all the time in big business: managers BSing customers about stuff they don't know, managers BSing higher managers about stuff they don't know, engineers BSing managers ... you get the idea.

Is it just fear of seeming weak or ignorant? What is it about our culture that makes us so resistant to admitting that we don't know something?

I'm reminded of the "Have you tried Javascript?" story: http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/Straight_Shooter_for_Upper_M...

"What is it about our culture that makes us so resistant to admitting that we don't know something?"

I've heard it explained as "Male Answer Syndrome"

http://www.wordspy.com/words/maleanswersyndrome.asp

If this were called "female lying syndrome" it would be a Thing You Could Not Say.

I'm a beer-swilling steak-eating iron-pumping male and I say "I don't know anything about that" all the time. What compelled you to post that glib answer?

"What compelled you to post that glib answer?"

It might be glib, it might be stereotypical, but I run into BS answers a lot. The article struck a chord with me because I've witnessed this quite often over the years, and its mostly the guys (rather than the gals) who to HAVE to have an answer.

I'm sure google and forums has made this "syndrome" worse.

to your question: I got this from a recent email discussion of a group of former co-workers from a now defunct software company, where someone started complaining about this issue and we had a big long discussion on it.

Guys and girls both do it. It's just that it happens in two different ways.

Guys are more likely to lie about things they haven't heard of, in my experience. girls are more likely to pretend to have a similar opinion as somebody they're talking with. On the contrary, girls will admit if they don't know what you're talking about, whereas guys are very willing to say that they loathed Moulin Rouge and that your taste is terrible.

It cuts both ways.

Its not so much the not understanding the OS/2 part, but moreso the fact that Arthur Anderson is about as disgraced as any auditing/accounting firm can be while still having profitable divisions, which should sound off the alarm bells.

Is it really reasonable to expect a business person to be familiar with the history of countless major software artifacts that are essentially defunct, and/or similarly many contemporary research projects that also produce possibly usable software artifacts?

I wouldn't expect the business people to be familiar with OS2. But I would expect them to admit they have no clue what it is.

Does Andersen have any profitable divisions? Heck, does it have any divisions?

http://finance.google.com/finance?q=NYSE%3AACN

Andersen has been shut down, but their consultants seem to be doing okay.

Someone you respect and trust lies to you and you fall for it. Film at 11.

Even if these guys aren't falling for it, they're trying not to make the fellow look too dumb on this.

I would be more comfortable with this test if it didn't include the "thousands of case studies". Had it been true, the entrepreneur would likely be humiliated (or shown much less capable) if he professed to be clueless about this trend. If it's important enough to have 3rd party case studies written in the thousands, surely he glossed over it somewhere.

I'd really like them to say "Wow-- I hadn't heard it was coming back so strongly. We'll definitely look into it. Have you heard what kind of browser/flash/cross-compiler/solitaire support they have?" but I'm not going to fault an entrepreneur from trying to dance around such a strongly worded test by a VC prankster.

I think the point he's making is it's better to admit gaps in your knowledge than bullshit.

While I may not have been bold faced about "OS/2 is back ? OH that's awesome" I sure as hell would have pointed out that Arthur Andersen is gone, fallout from the Enron scandal.

My assumption is that he threw the Andersen bit in to totally kill any chance of 'reality' in the OS/2 comment.

I would just have assumed that he meant Accenture and mis-spoke.

Ok, if he has a pattern of saying dumb things it's different, but if he just goes off on one for a moment - why would you rub his nose in it?

Probably.

But then again, I've never learned to keep my mouth shut, which is why I'm still working for other people.

While this article is funny it also just pisses me off. Who are these morons that are getting all this VC money?

After a long fight I've finally decided to believe PG. It does matter where you start your startup, you're not going to get funding in Tulsa OK. Apparently you can be an idiot and get funding in Canada though, maybe I should move there.

> Apparently you can be an idiot and get funding in Canada though, maybe I should move there.

Well .. are you an idiot ? :-)

haha, well I could be, if it gets me funding. ;)

All is fair in love and war.

The real point here is to just relax and be human while making a pitch. If your feeding lines of BS to a VC he won't want to be your business partner, because it will want to know when things are going bad. Complete frankness and a normal conversation will get you far in life.

The Right Answer to this question is, "No, I hadn't heard about that study. Can you send me a pointer?" That completely defuses the situation, and hedges against the possibility that the guy might not be joking.

Kind of makes me wish we had a list of companies he'd tried this at; it makes me nervous to think I might be invested in some of them.

you didn't know that os/2 main function was cooking the books and came with an unprinter? Jk for any os/2 heads.

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