[joshu]

They look at patterns. This is what VC does.

You have a content business. The exits tend to suck there. Pattern. I certainly avoid ad-driven businesses as angel investments.

Also, if you conduct yourself in person like you do here that is probably another issue.

[NY_Entrepreneur]

"They look at patterns. This is what VC does."

Yup, again, they don't have effective criteria.

"You have a content business." Wrong. You are misinformed.

"Also, if you conduct yourself in person like you do here that is probably another issue."

What I do here is fine. What PG wrote is a bit far from what VCs do, and I called BS.

Generally people want to suck up to the VCs and get all excited when they 'receive a round of funding'. No, what they did was just sell a huge chunk of their business and put themselves under the control of a VC Board under some really bad terms. I won't suck up to VCs.

Entrepreneurs, including in IT, and on HN, need simply to observe that the US, border to border, is just awash in entrepreneurs who start successful businesses on Main Street with no contact with VCs. The people I've seen in yacht clubs were mostly successful on Main Street, and there wasn't a penny of VC equity in sight.

My mention of a pizza shop is dead on the center of the target: Now a Web site serving a few dozen Web pages a second takes much less in capital equipment to get started than a pizza shop. And the Web site has some advantages, e.g., once the site is up, mostly just lean back and let the servers do the work, 24 x 7, and that beats the heck out of all the food handling, kitchen cleaning, floor washing, worker supervising, customer interactions, etc. at a pizza shop.

I and likely nearly all of us have neighbors in big truck, little truck businesses, fast food, gas stations, rental property, various trades, etc. They make it, buy houses and new cars, get their kids through college, etc. without a big failure rate and without VC. A Web site can be a better business, still.

Since on average, as reported by Mark Suster, VCs are not making much if any money, I have more respect as businessmen for a guy running a pizza shop, especially a guy running several, than I do for VCs.

For technical expertise, maybe in all the US a dozen IT VCs have some significant technical qualifications, and otherwise they would be at best just dead weight in an IT startup. So I can't respect VCs technically either. VCs commonly have a LOT of trouble handling their e-mail; NOT good. VCs commonly want others, lawyers, CEOs, bankers, etc., to 'filter' entrepreneurs for them; NOT good. VCs commonly assert that they have wide 'networks' -- mostly not among well qualified technical people! Nearly none of the VCs are anything like the people I respected in math and physics in school or like the people I respected, say, at Yorktown Heights.

VCs need entrepreneurs more than entrepreneurs need VCs. So, I'm not here to suck up to VCs. For what PG wrote, I call BS. So be it. There's nothing wrong with that. HN is for 'hackers' who should not be sucking up to VCs.

[tptacek]

VCs want a specific kind of entrepreneur. You might need to face up to the fact that, generalizations aside, they don't need you or me, despite the fact that we are entrepreneurs. Similarly, as admirable as it is to get a local small business off the ground, all the rationalization in the world isn't going to get Fred Wilson to fund your favorite pizza shop. Try convincing the owner to make grilled cheese, instead.

You might also pay careful attention to what Joshua Schacter is telling you about how VCs look at content businesses, because all the HN comments in the world aren't going to change the fact that it's hard to get funded with a business model that has become unpopular among VCs.

But on the other hand, like I've said ad nauseum: if you can go it alone without VC, I agree that you should. We did; we've been growing at a steady clip since 2005, and not chasing VC is (by unanimous consent among the founders) one of the better decisions we made.

I'll say it yet again: there are a lot of things to complain about with the VC model. I just don't buy that what they choose to fund is one of those things. If VC won't put money into something that is obviously a strong bet, that should be an exploitable market inefficiency; a place to build up market power and differentiation without competing with 10 me-too valley shoot-the-moon built-to-flip startups.

Good luck with your thing!