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That's incredibly honorable of you guys, and thank you! But the explanation I don't buy. If you dislike a group, and choose not to fund them, their idea still might be pretty good. (IIRC, one or some of your essays mention that the greatness of ideas and the groups behind them are somewhat independent of each other).

In this case, what incentive do you have to keep the idea to yourself, and not tell/hint at it to a funded startup?

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what incentive do you have to keep the idea to yourself

That we promised to. And in actual fact it is very rare to hear a good idea from a group we don't want to fund. I can only remember being constrained by our policy once, when a group we interviewed had an idea I thought would be useful to Bountii (I think it was).

Your word and reputation are certainly worth far more than a single shared idea. Those are pretty strong incentives.

I would assume that if a VC got the reputation of taking ideas and pushing them to other groups instead of the originators, it would kill their credibility. And without credibility, no one is going to go to them for funding.

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