5 ms·
> East Coast VCs are much more conservative, which is ultimately bad because it results in less moonshots succeeding. This is really accurate, at least from my
by alehul 6y ago
> East Coast VCs are much more conservative, which is ultimately bad because it results in less moonshots succeeding.
This is really accurate, at least from my experience as someone of a similar age working on my first startup at the time.
With cold outreach to VCs in NYC I had zero responses, and only two meetings with BigCos curious about us; they seemed easier to get the attention of.
When I reached out to investors on the west coast it was entirely different. I still remember getting my first reply. It was a rejection, but a super-detailed one from Topher Conway of SV Angel that stuck with me. Despite it being a cold email, he offered up a lot of points that helped me adapt my strategy and address what investors may be concerned about.
I was a kid with anxiety and never replied back to that rejection email (pains me to this day), but I have so much appreciation for people like that, who are aplenty in the Bay Area.
- adammunich 6y agoReply to his email now?
- alehul 6y agoI lost the domain of the email address a while back so I can’t even see it anymore... Will try to guess his email address to send a thank-you later today; better late than never even if very late? One of those funny situations of “ah, yes, now with my own domain Gmail can never take my email away from me!” but then my payment failing and my domain going to auction before I notice.
- quickthrower2 6y agoYuk! Domains suck in that regard.
- lemonberry 6y agoA little old fashioned, but you could try a snail mail thank you card. I'm definitely showing my age a bit here, but it's something that I've started doing with my clients. Regardless, it's definitely never to late to say thank you whether it's via email or some other medium.
- irjustin 6y agoIn support - do it! It means a lot to be told a genuine thank you.
- Cactus2018 6y agoHe is on LinkedIn and Twitter.
- naringas 6y ago> East Coast VCs are much more conservative, which is ultimately bad because it results in less moonshots succeeding. "East Coast VCs are much more conservative, which is actually better in a longer term because it results in more stable return rates (less failure)"
- alehul 6y agoI should’ve only quoted the first part of the sentence as relevant to me, but: Better for whom? I agree it could result in better average returns for the firm, but it likely isn’t better for moving society forward as a whole.
- BrianOnHN 6y agoWhat makes you think moving society forward is on anyone's agenda? The best we can do is align incentives. Given recent events, incentives seem to be far from aligned, even in the most basic & important aspects of our society (policing, pandemic handling).
- roenxi 6y agoFirms that do not make a solid profit margin are a really bad sign - it means that there is little value add by the firm. If I buy $10 worth of paints (and equipment) then use that to create and sell you a painting for $10, that is society signalling that I really should find something better to do with my time. The raw materials are about as hard to produce as the care anyone has for my work. The value created by me doing the work was $0. On the other hand, an artist who turns $10 worth of paint into a $100 painting has created enormous value - that artist should be the one who gets all the paint, and that is what the market will sort out. That artist is not wasting time, their art is high value add over the raw materials. The time they spent on art added $90 in value. If firms tend to have solid profit margins, almost by magic society at large will get more actual value out of the same amount of resources. Nothing is good in excess, and there is plenty of intellectual room to quibble about where the threshold and preconditions need to be for the outcome to be 'good', but investors making a solid return is very healthy. It can move society as a whole forward.
- quickthrower2 6y agoI wonder how close or far the strategy for getting investment is to the strategy for growth/profit.
- raverbashing 6y agoI can see a parallel with the "why Europe doesn't have as many big tech companies as the US" discussions. Now change the question to "How many companies does the East Coast have in comparison with the West Coast." Or even SV. (Even if most companies are actually established in Delaware) Ease of finance and management vision (which kinda related to the first point) seems to be the main drivers.
- ghaff 6y agoThe caveat I'd make about that comparison is that the question a lot of people end up asking is "How many SV flavor of tech companies are on the East Coast vs. SV?" Ignoring, for example, biotech, defense contractors, finance, etc. The comparison isn't invalid but it's certainly biased towards tech=web-scale.
- frockington1 6y agoIf you Wikipedia List of largest companies by revenue, most seem to be headquartered in the East Coast and Midwest