8 ms·
Fundraising is hard, for sure. You know what's harder? Having investors want to meet with you, and taking your meeting, not because they see value in your busin
by cjoh 11y ago
Fundraising is hard, for sure. You know what's harder? Having investors want to meet with you, and taking your meeting, not because they see value in your business, but because they want to fuck you.
Can you imagine how infuriating that must be as an entrepreneur? Imagine that there's a 50/50 shot that, every time you have a meeting with someone, they're just stringing you along so that they have the opportunity to fuck you and have zero interest in actually investing. You'd be outraged not only on the creep-factor, but also just the complete waste of time. Moreover, these same people trying to fuck you are also investing in actively shittier companies than you run.
As people are trying to "focus on growth" every single one of these meeting invites for investors could be a huge waste of time, and that alone is cause for outrage. Take the sex out of it -- imagine that for every investor you pitched, 50% of the time the investor stood you up. That's the baseline of what's happening here: the investor isn't showing; in his place is also a dirtbag. That's a really hard fundraising environment.
The only thing I can critique this woman on is why she's not more upset, and why she's not publishing a list of names.
- GordonS 11y agoI'm sorry, but to suggest that it's 50/50 whether potential investors are only meeting you to bone you is just ludicrous. I find that quite insulting. You come across as sexist, and with a chip on your shoulder that big (and an ego to match), I certainly wouldn't want to invest in you.
- cjoh 11y agoYou're right, it is just ludicrous.
- woah 11y agoWhat do you base your assessment on?
- GordonS 11y agoI base this 'assessment' on the fact that not all men are unprofessional, drooling apes.
- DanBC 11y agoBut you are a man and so you don't get to see the vast amounts of sexist unprofessional behaviour that women have to put up with.
- GordonS 11y agoRegardless of my gender, I also know that not every man is a sexist bastard hell-bent on shagging every woman he meets. I really do find it ridiculous and offensive (slanderous, even) to suggest that all men (or 50% of men; it's not clear it the OP meant 50% of people or 50% of men) are like that.
- freedombeer 11y agoMy experience is different. I see the majority of men, irrespective of height and hair color, are actually drooling apes with shagging as their primary objective, often preceded by turgid double-entendres. Mirrors elude them, clearly. I often find myself treated as a sex object by both men and women in the most inappropriate settings, finding it necessary to remind people that some self-control with strangers would be more welcome than the pawing and expectant lame chat-up that they see as so important.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- ryanx435 11y agojust wanted to let you know that I agree. and I'm also sick of being blamed for a small minority of other men's actions. cheers, mate
- freedombeer 11y agoThe majority are, given half a chance. Introduce alcohol and many imagine they've been handed that chance. Macho shit permeates technology-related startups, from the language used throughout, to the expectations, preening and nostalgic whining about doing good and creating beautiful applications. The points raised by the author are clear and valid, and no bleating about how difficult it is to be a man will change that. Oh, and the fix isn't to tell women to man-up...
- ryanx435 11y agoI wouldn't want to invest in them eitger, mostly because of the massive victim complex they have.
- minot 11y ago> they're just stringing you along How is it worse than people meeting you so they can steal technical details about your product? Of course, it is a difficult environment. The question is what can we do to make it better for everyone and not just for women? Of course, there will always be people out there trying to waste your time. I just don't get what the product's plan is for a hockey stick growth. I need to understand that in about thirty seconds. I couldn't by looking at the website.
- cjoh 11y ago> How is it worse than people meeting you so they can steal technical details about your product? It's not. It's in addition to.
- facepalm 11y agoBeing attractive must be very hard. Men (especially the ones in IT) are so lucky that few of them will ever have to experience that affliction.
- dantillberg 11y agoYes, this. You wrote what I tried to write in another comment and you wrote it better. Thank you. As for other replies suggesting that 50/50 is an outrageous estimate, I think it can easily be even worse than that -- the fraction of investors potentially interested in making a deal with your business is very small (5%? 1%?), so it doesn't take many folks pretending to be interested to swing the balance, and those folks will also have a tendency to gravitate toward you at fundraising events, since they can clearly identify their target by appearance alone (i.e. "oh there's a pretty young woman, I should go say hello"). And yes, each of those interactions is perfectly legal (we'd all be condemning in chorus if there were groping or assault involved), and perfectly fine in isolation, but en masse they create a lot of extra work for the entrepreneur. Put in other words, at the micro level, these interactions are fine -- one or two people inviting you for a date could be lovely, or at least tolerable; but at the macro level, the combination of a large number of these isolated interactions creates an onerous and hostile environment.