^^^ This.

If you have a good track record of execution and have enough experience in your domain, you should be able to raise money (it's a slog but it is doable).

As such, we need to convince promising founders to come to us, convince prospects to become LPs in our funds, and convince other VCs to buy into our investment thesis (and thus build the pipeline to fund additional rounds)

Every job is basically a mix of sales, marketing, and domain experience.

P.S. love lambda ;)

There always seems to be this implication in anti-VC rhetoric that founders are somehow gullible to VC's (whatever that means). I've yet to meet a founder where this is true.

I've heard this pitch too. My favorite is when a VC told me my expectations were "too high as 90% of us couldn't get a job at Goldman and that we are just content marketers" which I felt was wonderfully honest.

Here's a solution: BG2 with Bill Gurley and Brad Gerstner is imho superior in quality and depth and bonus points as you don't have to listen to those 4 people.

I have the same thought process. What do they think about current high level trends, the economy, but otherwise I don't think very highly of them. The one bio science guy is decent, somewhat grounded compared to the others.

I did get kind of tried of their non-stop AI hype train talk. Seems like for majority of the last 1-2 years that's all they've talked about most of the time.

I find it educational and entertaining. Even though I am not in the VC industry in the sense that I'm not raising money or currently VC-backed, I find their insights into financial markets to be very useful. That isn't to say that I think everything they say is true — it just means that it often provides insights into things that are happening or are about to happen.

This is partly because of who listens to the podcast, and what they do after hearing about things on the podcast. For example, they may help move markets a bit due to their insider (not in the sense of illegal) information regarding tech companies and trends.

Knowing that they have said XYZ can help explain why a certain stock popped or dropped, or was written about in a major media publication.

As for whether they would care what you said about them in an online forum...I would think that would apply to pretty much any podcaster — even ones with 1/1000th of their audience.

They'd probably say that likability is orthogonal to picking and mentoring successful startups.

It’s just levels to how little you actually know. I don’t actually know too much more than what I knew when I only had 20k compared to more than that. They are rich, but they also don’t know too much more than their first million or so.

The only thing you’ll learn from this class of rich is how to stay rich. Most of us are stuck on step 1.

When Chamath explains the practical steps of his wealth it all sounds like psychopathy and luck. You can’t follow these game plans for shit, too much luck involved.

Actually, I think I like them more as people that I would like to hangout with every now and then. They have a silly sense of humor that I like (though JCal tries too hard).

I find their commentary to be so incredibly biased that it is 99% useless. They are all peddling their investments, positions etc. Chamath, for example, claimed that he did not know what Waymo was: either he is an idiot (since knowing this shit is his job), or this is all a show to promote their positions. I believe the latter.

It does help for picking up certain topics if you were out of the loop. However, I find that my HN+Twitter addiction makes me more aware of recent news than what they provide.

Other VC podcasts I find more informative, but also less entertaining: Village Global, Cognitive Revolution, World of DaaS

> what next, starting a forum?

Starting HN worked well for YC.

I like how Acquired ventures beyond recent tech startups and discusses older and non-tech companies like Walmart [1] or Hermès [2]. Their interview with Charlie Munger [3] was a particular treat and ended up being one of his last interviews.

[1]: https://www.acquired.fm/episodes/walmart

[2]: https://www.acquired.fm/episodes/hermes

[3]: https://www.acquired.fm/episodes/charlie-munger

I’ve talked a lot about propaganda as a war invention, like many great technological advancements, found its way into these civilian systems. Capturing mindshare with propaganda is basically what this is.

Marketing is the commercial term (brand ambassador, Orwell sleeps soundly). Propaganda has a lot more coercive connotations.

I don’t know what HN thinks, but you touch upon a good point that VCs do feel this need to differentiate. It reflects the broader shift where promising founders have more say and VCs aim to offer more than just money.

> VCs normally say the only invest in business that are referred to them by people they already know.

> I am starting to believe that may apply to all of them.

Maybe you should listen to their advice? Why not take a targeted approach and focus on getting referrals