How I Pitched Dave McClure In The Wrong Place At The Wrong Time | Hacker News Reader

How I Pitched Dave McClure In The Wrong Place At The Wrong Time

marcin.is

77 pointsmtreder44 comments

When I first learned who Dave McClure was and saw his flippant attitude and penchant for profanity, I was not a fan. I thought he seemed extremely unprofessional and was making other startup founders look bad. But over time as I learned more about him, I've definitely softened on him and now greatly respect him, for the following reasons:

First off, he's incredibly open about the fact that he could never fit in at a normal corporation due to his "eccentric ways", and by doing so empowers others who are going through the same thing. He doesn't necessarily encourage others to be like him, but he does (implicitly) encourage people to "Be Yourself" and to not be afraid to acknowledge that you may be different from the people around you and if so find a way of life that suits you better.

And most importantly, he has only the best of intentions - He truly wants young, up-and-coming founders to succeed and not have to go through the bullshit that he had to go through, and that seems to be his driving force in life.

Dave McClure naturally creates a certain type of culture in everything he does by way of his unique personality. If you don't like it that's cool, but in the big picture I think it's a good thing and makes Silicon Valley a more diverse and interesting community.

Let me get this straight.

The would-be pitcher said, "May I pitch you?" "Sure, in 15 min." Then during that 15 min in an interview that the would-be pitcher had no way to follow, Dave McClure said not to pitch him. Then he came back to listen to the pitch and it went horribly because Dave didn't want to be pitched.

If so then the fault here is all Dave's. If you don't want to be pitched, say so up front. If you said that you're willing to be pitched, show up for it mentally.

No, it went horribly because Dave listened and they were invited for a follow-up. Sounds like it went pretty well.

The starstruck tone of the article is a little embarrassing, but hey, Dave's pretty awesome.

It's not so much that Dave can't be pitched. He is trying to intelligently route pitching traffic through his expertise network, and you are probably wasting his time and not being diligent and respectful if you don't follow that advice.

Oh, according to the tweet, I thought the 15 min were the time when he took a dump.

I'll say it. We hold up some incredibly deficient people as idols in the tech world.

That's ad hominem and unnecessary and downright offensive. You should judge Dave McClure on his acts as an investor or advisor. HackerNews is meant to be a constructive forum, and this comment was anything but.

Words of wisdom. Besides, I'm the one to blame. If I would try to built an honest relationship with Dave and his network during past 12 months I wouldn't need to stalk him at the Launch Festival. My point is that cold-pitching people is risky and almost disrespectful to both parties (!). Just as investors should be respected as human beings and they deserve to be treated as humans (not wallets), entrepreneurs shouldn't knee before investors and almost beg for money with their pitch- we're the one building amazing companies after all.

It would be an ad hominem if I were in an argument with Dave and instead of listening to his points attacked him personally. In this case I'm talking about needing to see the forest for the trees. I'll gladly judge him on his acts a person in the position of being a gatekeeper to a world people build lives hopes and dreams on. You don't have to be a dick to be a good investor and advisor.

My concern is that you're calling someone a "dick" on a public forum. I believe that's unfounded and unnecessary.

Dave is actually a very nice and caring person when you meet and talk to him, his public persona be as it may.

And we shouldn't discuss him based on his self-established public persona in a public forum? I worry that we're building a culture of internet builders that excuse boorish behavior because someone has a platform or something we need access to. I may be wrong to call him a dick in general but his reaction in this case can certainly be called 'dickish'.

The same sort of behavior from Linus has been bothering me as well. Linus may hold the keys to something many people want access to, but that doesn't justify his recent behavior. When you are in a position of authority, you should hold yourself to a higher standard.

When 500 Startups didn't have the influence it does now, Dave McClure's schtick may have made sense as a marketing ploy. But the days of needing over the top rhetoric to get attention are over.

Compare Dave McClure with Jack Dorsey. Who would rather work with and who sets a better example for the technology industry to follow?

I disagree with you, but I also disagree with those who would disagree with you. To put it shortly--I think Linus has every right to be an asshole to people who want to contribute to "his" project.

And I think we have every right to be mad at him for it.

And I think he has every right to tell us to piss off for being mad at him for it.

And I think we have every right to be mad at him for that.

Isn't free society wonderful? :)

Linus has a right to act however he wants. That doesn't make it right, and frankly it doesn't give me a higher opinion of him. We've seen thread after thread in the past couple weeks about the "locker room" mentality of the industry, but from my seat it seems like a lot of people are condoning it.

I don't know anything about "the industry", since I go out of my way to avoid working in "the industry"--but I want "going to work" to be another way to say "going to go goof off with my friends in a way that makes us money somehow." And I like it when my friends act like assholes; it's amusing, because I know them well enough to know it's not really all that serious.

That might not work very well when your coworkers aren't your friends--but really, that's the problem with that, not anything to do with objectively objectionable behavior.

"When you are in a position of authority, you should hold yourself to a higher standard." Why? Says who? As soon as people make it to a certain level, they should change? What level? If they're no longer who they were, what do you expect them to achieve in the future?

There are 7 billion people on the planet, the vast majority of them do not share your values.

People are people and everyone has their flaws. Idols and Celebrities are first idealized, then put under a microscope. Then we complain when they act like mere mortals.

Personally, I like having people who say exactly what they think in prominent position in the tech world. The more they anger people, the better. What a boring world it would be if nobody ever said anything for fear of offending.

Reading this makes me question why people are begging to work with Dave McClure.

He's a wise guy and he's a lot of fun. Honestly - I'm not surprised that people want to work with him.

wise guy [1] noun Informal. a cocksure, conceited, and often insolent person

Sounds about right.

[1]http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/wiseguy

Crap. That wasn't my intention. Didn't know about this collocation in english :D

Because they have a higher probability of making money if he likes their idea? Its not because hes a super nice, cool guy.

"Pitching me directly for 30 seconds is a completely fucking ineffectual way to get my attention... and usually destined to fail miserably."

Hilarious quote, but also incredibly honest. Great stuff.

Thanks! Glad you like it. I think there's a lesson for entrepreneurs all over the world in it.

Pitch by not pitching, seriously some of the best advice anyone could give a startup. I too get very sick of pitches when really all i want to do is meet smart people, if they turn out to be interesting, then lets hear the pitch.....but dont start with it!

I learned this lesson the hard way. It's amazing how much more interest you can garner just by treating the other person like a human being rather than a means to an end. Unfortunately, it is easy for a startup founder to fall into this trap.

On the "reading the bubble tea leaves" front: what does it say about the startup world when even full time investors are sick of being pitched?

I'm watching this all from the outside, in a stable salaried job outside the bay area. But it just feels like the end of a road -- the community is eating itself. Making stuff people want is a distant memory at this point.

That's a superficial view of the state of affairs.

Of course that the offer (pitches) will always be greater by several orders of magnitude than the demand (investor money). A natural consequence of that is that investors are sick of being pitched everywhere they go.

But for investors, is it better to have too many pitches, or not enough?

Don't worry, there are still plenty of people shipping shit that people want :)

Making stuff people want is different than making what you think investors or well-known tech people want.

The reason Dave McClure is sick of being pitched is not because he's jaded or tired of doing what he does.

It's because it's not humanly possible for a single investor, be it Dave McClure or a YC partner, to process the sheer volume of pitches that come their way. There needs to be some sort of filtering mechanism, and endorsements/recommendations are one way of doing that.

As Dave mentioned in the video embedded in the article, he WILL give his full attention to a founder IF they have already met with 500 Startups portfolio companies (i.e. people he trusts and respects) and proven to them that they are legit.

People like Dave McClure (and pg) have thousands of people vying for his extremely limited time, and so giving his full attention to every pitch that comes his way would be a huge disservice to the other startups that actually deserve it i.e. have actually done their homework, put time in to prove themselves, and committed to forming long-term relationships with people in his community vs. those looking for a quick and easy shortcut to funding and networking.

That's an explanation for the proximate cause of "do not fucking pitch me". And that part I understand just fine.

My point was deeper: once the environment has reached a point where the important investors have "thousands of people vying for [their] extremely limited time", to the extent that "it's not humanly possible [...] to process the sheer volume of pitches", then it seems like the startup environment has jumped the shark. It's a machine now -- generate as many launches as possible, and pitch them to as many investors as possible. The focus is about funding -- not survival (does anyone remember "ramen profitable"? Yeah, we don't hear that so much anymore), and not products.

Back in 2005, it didn't seem that way at all...

Touche, but is this hyper growth in startups necessarily a bad thing, or just a bump in the road and a bottleneck to be overcome?

Despite how mainstream tech entrepreneurship has become, and despite how many founders are not in it for the right reasons, I still believe (or hope) it's mostly noise and the best products and founders will always rise to the top. The US (and the world) still needs more entrepreneurship to stay competitive, though perhaps not in its current model/form, and we haven't yet reached the point of diminishing returns in my opinion.

This is a tangent to your main point, but TechCrunch had a pretty good piece on how YC tries to tackle this problem: http://techcrunch.com/2012/04/02/yc-y-combinator-scaling/

Oh, I agree that entrepreneurship is important, and if a thousand iterations on "mobile social sharing app with nice typography" is the price to pay, then it's worth paying.

But as someone who watched the end of the 90's boom, this feels the same way. I don't have numbers, but do any of us really believe there is enough future revenue in mobile social sharing apps with nice typography to justify the absolutely insane funding environment?

I don't either. And there's a hard landing ahead.

As long as most of those people get turned away (and it seems like that is the case), everything is fine. AS long as most of these startups are failing, everything is as it should be.

The only point at which anything has jumped the shark is when you start seeing 50 companies IPO at once.

There's nothing wrong with filtering. Go have a look in your spam folder - there'll be thousands of emails in there, but nobody's saying that email's jumped the shark.

I think Mark Suster has a similar mindset (with similar bluntless albeit not as hard-hitting perhaps) -- there's no way he can hear everyone pitch or have a coffee with every startuper, but if you take the time to get an intro through a well-trusted contact that will move you further down the "conversion funnel" to getting a meeting. Sure Dave McClure or Mark Suster or any other investor might be right in front of you, but you also don't want to reek of desperation when you make your move.

Speaking of wrong place/wrong time, was funny how a well known investor recently asked in a bathroom during an intermission for evaluations of companies :). That violates bathroom rules I think!

Next time: "Hi!, I'm xyz, you may remember me from such startups as ..."

He actually knew who I am (at least a little bit), but you're right, that's a necessary start.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oC7TVRU5nho

I can tell you for sure, this story didn't take place in the public library! Because Dave McClure can barely read and write!

Random observation, the embedded youtube video is sized in such a way to clip off the controls that let you full screen it or watch it on youtube or change resolution. I don't know if that is intentional or not but its annoying on a smaller screen device that its not easily zoomable to full screen.

Kindly shut the fuck up.

I admire your consequence in replying :)

And I'll again suggest that throwaway accounts should be read-only for a week before being allowed to comment.

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