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Comment by tyingq | Hacker News Reader

That sounds right to me, but this:

"He wore cargo shorts and a T-shirt to a meeting with Geodesic, a VC firm founded by John Roos, a former U.S. ambassador to Japan. An Iterable board member later informed him Geodesic wouldn’t invest, implying it was partly because of his casual attire."

Seems petty. Surely VC firms have had to look past appearances before. Of course, it did say "partly"...other things could have transpired in the meeting.

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I once worked in a building and got to be friends with the CEO of a medical tech start up. He dressed like shit everyday, literally had his toe poking out a hole in his shoe. One day he’s dressed impeccably, not just a suit - but a well tailored, very sharp one. I asked what the occasion was and he gave me some of the best advice ever: “I’m going to ask investors for money today and if you want people to hand you money you need to look like a guy people hand money to.”

That is actually incredibly good advice. Sounds obvious on its face, but isn't necessarily obvious in the moment.

Oh yeah, and he *really* dressed like shit normally - you could easily think he was homeless.

Unless you're wearing a blanket it is difficult for me to tell that someone is homeless from what they are wearing.

> "...if you want people to hand you money you need to look like a guy people hand money to.”

Pretty sage advice. I'm keeping this one.

If the business and team were phenomenal, the attire wouldn’t have mattered.

However, dressing appropriately for a meeting is an easy way to demonstrate that the person is taking the situation seriously and being respectful of the other parties. If someone can’t make the effort to dress appropriately for pivotal VC meetings that decide the future of their company, it’s likely they won’t bother taking other meetings seriously either: Meetings with customers, partners, recruits, and so on.

As a VC, you don’t want to fund someone who will go around being disrespectful, intentionally or otherwise, thought your network. We like to glorify the exceptions like Steve Jobs, but the reality is that dressing appropriately to show respect for your business partners is a fact of life.

In 2021, it’s cheap to dress in a presentable manner. You don’t need a suit and tie (west coast, anyway) but you do need to make a basic effort.

Yes. I saw a presentation by the CEO of Western Digital. He was dressed in a polo shirt and blue jeans. But he was in fact very well dressed and if I were in a Brooks Brothers suit, he would have looked more professional. His presentation was effortlessly on point. I don't think he microdosed before the meeting. Moreover, I thought after the presentation, yeah, I want to work for that guy.

I don't think dress has anything to do with this firing.

I think there are nuances beyond just the type of clothing. I would guess that the CEO of Western Digital was wearing clothes that were well-fitting, of a modern cut and style that showed he was aware of trends, and of a quality that indicated expensive clothing. This was probably paired with a nice leather belt and dress shoes, matching socks, and perhaps a nice analog watch. Also, he was probably clean-shaven and had styled his hair. Now, if you told me he looked like RMS on a bad day and still looked more professional than you in a Brooks Brothers suit, I would be really surprised.

It's not about clothes, it's about signalling preparation and respect.

When Bill Gates and Paul Allen were preparing for their life changing meeting with IBM, they knew that IBM has very strict dress code, so they dressed in conservative IBM style suits. At the same time IBM executives wanted to make these young unknown west coast guys comfortable and decided to wear relaxed and informal attire breaking their own dress code.

When the two groups met, they busted into laughing. It was funny but also made it clear that both were serious and wanted the deal succeed.

I don't know.

If you have to pull millions of dollars out of your own pocket to invest into a company led by someone that doesn't care enough to dress at least business casual... I can understand thinking twice about that.

Maybe the pitch wasn't even that convincing, the cargo pants were just the cherry on top.

Zhu explained in the article how he bombed the pitch because he couldn’t follow his slide deck. I doubt that instilled confidence lol.

It's a little unclear in the article, but it sounds like that was a different meeting.

Personally I think caring about how they are dressed for anything less than "covered in bodily fluids and/or naked" is stupidity normalized. It is not only a superfical distraction from the relevant and "bike shedding" but literally asking to be deceived and selecting for people who can deceive you best.

Dressing appropriately is short-hand for "I speak your language. I understand cultural norms and can adhere to them. I won't embarrass you in front of your peers and clients." If you don't dress appropriately, they will have to find out all those items through discussions with you, and it definitely adds a hurdle to any initial discussions.

Yeah, it is a game. Dressing up is just playing the game, to show that you're one of the boys. But you know what? It's also an extremely low-hanging fruit kind of game to play, so why not? What do you have to gain by refusing to play that one, when what it might take is a few hundred bucks and an afternoon going shopping?

One of the big things a CEO does is meet with people to sell the company, make deals, connect with investors and all that. You need to be able to read social situations properly, and if you can't do that, you are at a disadvantage. One way of demonstrating that you can handle social situations properly is knowing what to wear.

A really talented CEO might be good enough to overcome "quirkiness" on the "dress-the-part" side, but you have to have sufficient other advantages.

> A really talented CEO might be good enough to overcome "quirkiness" on the "dress-the-part" side

A really talented CEO isn't overcoming this. They're not overcoming anything; they're using it.

> Surely VC firms have had to look past appearances before.

Given the stats on VC investments in firms led by women, I'm not sure this is a true statement.

I think that depends on the type of VC or the particular partner at the VC. Especially the ones that invest in later stage rounds and enterprise software companies. They don’t appreciate flip flops and hoodies. I think it is always best to err on the side of “conservatism” if you want to raise money. Obviously there are many VCs who talk openly about their regrets in missing out on rocketships like Facebook because of Mark Zuckerbergs arrogance.

He did the famous Sequoia pitch in pajamas:

https://www.businessinsider.com/mark-zuckerbergs-brutal-pran...

Stuart Ellman the VC talking about Mark Zuckerbergs arrogance and why they skipped investing in Facebook:

https://www.businessinsider.com/15-people-missing-out-on-mil...

It just doesn't seem to have any benefit for the VC, to me. It's not really an indicator of anything useful. They wouldn't have scheduled the meeting if the meaningful stuff wasn't more important than flip-flops.

Wow talk about projection. They fail big time at their job after engaging in petty gatekeeping and then declare in a goddamn high publication count article the investment arrogant?

The employee who rejected J. K. Rowling's Sorcerer's stone manuscript for being too long didn't try to say it was her fault for making it too long and that is why the company missed out on the first billion dollar author.

> Of course, it did say "partly"...other things could have transpired in the meeting.

And another source in the article claims that had nothing to do with it; so who knows.

> "He wore cargo shorts and a T-shirt to a meeting with Geodesic,

people who run the core routers of the largest ISPs on the planet regularly show up to meetings in cargo shorts and t-shirts, believe it or not. They're responsible for things much more critical than some overly-valued advertising/consumer promotions marketing firm.

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