[johns]

Joel's going to the Valley to pitch SO while Jeff's off in New Zealand at Webstock/on vacation. Do VCs care if only half of the founding team is there? What if one of them is 1/3 of the development team and the primary technical driving force?

[spolsky]

No VC would invest based on one meeting. Nor would they expect the guy who is building the site to schlep along on every pitch meeting -- Jeff has better things to do!.

Presumably if we found some interested parties, they would want to meet the key team members, in a second or third meeting.

[tlrobinson]

No, in fact I think it's expected that only one of founders be present for initial meetings. If I were a VC I'd wonder why they were all wasting their time when it could be handled by one person.