VCs in the defense?

Filed in archive Venture Capital on March 24, 2005

Jeff defends the moral of (some) VCs:

"You want to talk about arrogance, how about the scores of entrepreneurs and their evil close cousins - the "successful executives" - who fail to even consider the possibility that their best formed plans may have a few flaws in them, or the notion that their new widget just isn't going to drive the big deals that they dream about. Better yet is the entrepreneur who thinks that their pre-product, pre-revenue company is worth $10-15 million pre just because. Serial entrepreneurs are perhaps even worse at times becuase they really do think they are the dog wagging the tail (us)... even though the odds of finding serially successful entrepreneurs are only slightly better than O.J. didn't do it.

I do think there are a lot of assholes in this business, but the Asshole Quotient is probably no more or less than any other business where the stakes are pretty high and you are investing OPM (Other People's Money). I will submit that the Asshole Quotient is coorelated to where your firm is on the food chain... Kleiner and Benchmark are not humble firms."