[hippo33]

Do we need to pander to VCs? I'm also not sure that your assertion that it hurts their credibility is true.

Fred Wilson has publicly admitted himself that he hasn't led a deal all year. I don't think that affects his reputation. If anything, I think people applaud him for his transparent efforts.

[orangethirty]

The VC industry works like stocks. Its more what people are believing than actual hard numbers. Speculation is the name of the game. And speculation is driven by hearsay. So, that is why traction is a popular term these days, and why "founders" hate to talk about actual money earned. You can hear them say But with more investment we can get more traction and thus leverage the market towards using our product. Which is wall street talk for We heard $some_company is going to close a huge deal. We can't say when exactly, but its going to happen. We want to leverage the current stock price to gain a couple of extra points when the sale goes through.

Smoke and mirrors.