[U32LnJfiYoiLQP]

I know of a company where the parent of one of the founders made a ton of money for the VC. Twice. In exchange, one of the partners has put some seed money into the kid's startup. The seed money is a pittance compared to how much money the VCs got.

What's sad about it is that there's no entrepreneurial spark in the founders. They're not hungry for success. They're paying themselves way too much and working with no effect. The company will fail, and they'll go on to whatever nice lifestyle awaits them.

(edit: Note that I'm not saying that this is typical, just that there are examples of this "insider" activity.)

[michaelochurch]

What's sad about it is that there's no entrepreneurial spark in the founders. They're not hungry for success. They're paying themselves way too much and working with no effect. The company will fail, and they'll go on to whatever nice lifestyle awaits them.

This is interesting and insightful. I suppose the learned laziness these kids have is just as adverse to creative accomplishment as the learned helplessness that the rest of us end up with.

I should add that I don't actually think every VC-funded startup is bullshit. It just seems that the good ones are quite rare. They're also very selective (which they should be) but that becomes a problem when you've worked for garbage startups that have damaged your career. So you have to be really careful in the VC-istan game.