[larrys]

This raises an interesting issue of what I will call "the lender" effect.

In an old business where I had to apply for loans I was always in contact with the bank officer. Never the person who made the decision which the officer called "the lender". If I got the loan I would hear the "the lender approved" if not the opposite. "The lender" could have been a person or a group who knows.

Anyway I remember thinking about that and I came to the conclusion that the bank may have been purposely separating the person wanting the money from the person who could make the decision about giving money. Why?

Because (I think) "the lender" just looked (read) at the cold hard facts. Their opinion of whether to loan money wasn't colored by anything the person wanting the money said or of course how they appeared.

This more or less goes along with what PG is saying. The question is if this is the case (and I believe it is based upon years of this happening) it might explain partly the VC success rate. Since they put much weight on individuals and teams and not on the idea. Perhaps some of the weight they put on the teams is colored by rhetoric that they should be removing from the decision making process. (And yes I know the first thing people do in YC is fill out an app and then get to pitch.)