Comment by ryanlchan | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ryanlchan | Hacker News Reader

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There's a great point here - the VCs are just like any good start up, and are investing only in things that help make them more successful. The difference here is that the VCs are likely satisfied focusing on qualifying inbound leads, whereas most of the businesses we see on HN are actively trying to attract traffic with outbound messaging.

A nice looking webpage is the VC equivalent of a 'vanity metric' - sure it looks good, but does it help them source great investments? Perhaps it raises the number of views on their website, but are any of them the high-quality entrepreneurs they'd like to invest in?

Frankly, I'd think that the problem that the top VC firms is not knowing enough people, it is finding enough time to properly evaluate them all. If you're picking a VC based on their website and not their intrinsic business worth or ability to help you succeed, you probably aren't the kind of business they're looking for.

> you probably aren't the kind of business they're looking for.

Sure, but isn't this the problem?

Assume you have a revenue-generating business making 250k in year two. In my opinion, this startup should be valued at considerably more than 10x revenue. But that sort of valuation is hard to get, and likely impossible if the founder has to jump through hoops simply to get introductions.

What will these companies do? They'll focus on growth and avoid raising capital. Because once you break about a million capital becomes really easy to raise, and you can get money on far better terms than any VCs will offer. So there's an adverse selection problem here that effectively concentrates investment in high-risk businesses, since as soon as companies become self-sustainable pursuing funding for growth is usually less preferable to chasing down outside money.

That is very probably true.

I also think that the stage of the VC plays a big role here. Usually early stage VCs are the ones that will be the most involved in product, and also given their abundance at the moment, they need to "show off" that they know what they're talking about.

Late stage VCs add value in a very different way, operations, sales, finance, etc. and thus have absolutely no idea nor interest on how to create a compelling website.

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