Thanks for your note and sending ?investor? our way, we really appreciate it and always enjoy meeting with YC followers. Keep 'em coming!
We loved ?investor? and are impressed by both his pedigree and the portfolio he has assembled thus far. It's exciting to see investors seeking "real-world" opportunities in important areas, which aligns well with our long-tail world view.
However it's currently a little early for us to get sidetracked here. We'd like to see ?investor? show a few more exits and demonstrate a more complete core understanding of our market. We've offered to introduce him to a few value-add founders within our network, who we think could really help him work through and grasp some of the technological issues fundamental to achieving a product/market fit in our industry. We plan on keeping in close touch and will be iterating back once he's at a more appropriate point to deserve equity from those who have worked so hard.
On a separate note, I feel like we could be doing more to help YC groupies. We're amazed at what people want to throw money at and we'd love to grab a coffee and talk more about how we could help investors better understand the opportunities we've poured so much of our hearts and souls into.
I couldn't help but chuckle at this as Harj even included the concept of "grabbing coffee", which is discussed in "Maker's Schedule, Manager's Schedule" [1]:
"Business people in Silicon Valley (and the whole world, for that matter) have speculative meetings all the time. They're effectively free if you're on the manager's schedule. They're so common that there's distinctive language for proposing them: saying that you want to 'grab coffee,' for example.
Speculative meetings are terribly costly if you're on the maker's schedule, though. Which puts us in something of a bind. Everyone assumes that, like other investors, we run on the manager's schedule. So they introduce us to someone they think we ought to meet, or send us an email proposing we grab coffee. At this point we have two options, neither of them good: we can meet with them, and lose half a day's work; or we can try to avoid meeting them, and probably offend them."
Not to veer too far off-topic, but these "speculative meetings" are often (but not always) well worth the schedule disruption, even if it ripples out across several extra "productive" hours. Perhaps for Paul Graham, who has all the VCs in the world scrambling to fund his picks, it's not so important, but for the little people like you and I, the value of a good network is immense.
Business is primarily a social thing. It always has been, and is no different today. This is why inferior products can make tons of money.
Thanks for linking this. I just sent it to a few Project Managers friends. Along with:
"I find myself reading this while waiting for a build to QA. This is the time I have to write code. When the meetings are done. Meetings are important, but this is worthy of a read if you can schedule it in. Also, I'd be happy to discuss this over coffee."
I might be misreading this, but it seems like PG is humiliating one of his partners in public.
EDIT: Yep, I was misreading this. It wasn't so clear that it was an inside joke. I guess the joke's on me and the stereotypical non-partner VC, ha ha?
From Wikipedia:
Harjeet Taggar (born June 8, 1985), is a British businessperson and partner at the seed-stage investment firm, Y Combinator. He was formerly funded by Y Combinator and sold his company Auctomatic to Canadian company Live Current Media at age 22.
In 2010 he was named as the first new partner at Y Combinator since its founding in 2005, aged 25. In 2011 he was named on the Forbes 30 under 30 list.
This is mail from Harjeet written as if it's from a VC to a YC partner like himself. Since Harj is not a VC and is part of YC, he wouldn't write Paul a mail like that. It's satire.
"On a separate note, I feel like we could be doing more to help YC companies. We're in awe of what you've built over there at the Y and we'd love to grab a coffee and talk more about how we could be helpful to both the companies and you."
VCs, management consultants, business gurus... all the same rubbish.
After working in Big 4 management consulting jobs for almost six years, I'm constantly surprised that phrases like "value-add" and "validate a couple of the core assumptions" still have the power to bring me out in a cold sweat.
But what is it going to take to end this nonsense? We know we're talking rubbish. Most of us hate these stock business-speak phrases, yet still most of us choose to hide behind them. Clients are partly to blame, but an industry that tries to differentiate itself by the bizarreness of its terminology (thereby fabricating "exclusivity")is more to blame.
When are we going to wake up and realise that speaking in plain, simple, understandable English does not make us look stupid and simple. Quite the opposite.
Your irony detector needs adjustment. As pg wrote in his introduction to this letter,
"I sent the YC partners an email saying I was growing increasingly impressed with one of the startups in the current batch and asking what they thought of them, and Harj Taggar replied with this brilliant piece of VC boilerplate."
The joke is on the people who think that Taggar was expressing what he thinks, rather than what he has heard too many venture capitalists say when they aren't willing to say what they think.
When are we going to wake up and realise that speaking in plain, simple, understandable English does not make us look stupid and simple.
In my experience, this kind of speak is not about sounding sophisticated, it's usually about saying nothing while coming across as sophisticated. I see this from business folks all the time; you rarely see it from technical people, but when you do, it's very annoying.
I've been playing around with the theory lately that the buzzwords and nonsense are an elaborate ritual not only to hide personal ignorance, but the fact that there is no known reliable way to solve most of the major issues surrounding the management of firms at all - yet, most peoples' careers revolve around pretending that the opposite is true.
My only issue with this email is that he used the subject "we" when mentioning grabbing a coffee. The current accepted standard of phrasing in business circles eliminates the subject and would read "would love to grab a coffee".
Is that really an accepted standard? I have to go out on a limb here and ask if that's even a proper sentence? Who/what is the subject? It certainly helps to know who you would be having coffee with.
I... I hope I'm not ruining it by asking if this is a test to see how the HN comments respond to subtlety?
<strike>I suppose that's part of the joke, though like some good jokes it makes me sad. We get upset that VC's respond with boilerplate and knee-jerk, but then we do the same thing.</strike>
Update: egh, looks like we're not doing too badly.
Even if it sounds impersonal and lazy, this is just called being polite, most people still prefer an answer of this kind to "lol no, sorry, you suck". And that's why we do it aswell. Perhaps we should work more on make it seem less impersonal, but the message is clear and loud in any case.
Brillant, and there is a common denominator across all this kind of communications: there is no real information, so after some practice it's easy to spot it's just bullshit.
Btw this style is not just common to VCs, but also to clueless management.
Here's what I gleamed from the message:
1. Taggar doesn't want to invest in the company.
2. He wants Graham to keep referring other companies to him.
3. He may want to invest in the company in the future.
4. He introduced the founder to some of his acquaintances (see 2).
Let's look at what a VC is trying to accomplish here.
- They don't want to invest for reason {X}. Could be as trivial as someone not liking the founder or they could genuinely think they don't know whether the company will do well.
- They don't want to tell the founders what they really think. Mostly because they want to hold open the option in case they are proven wrong as often happens. As much as founders say they like honest replies, I've seen so many founders say "VC X said he doesn't want to invest in us because he disagrees with us on {reason}- I'm going to prove that moron so wrong".
- They want to help out the founder with a couple of intros so that the founder doesn't feel like he got nothing from them in return.
The boilerplate/corporate B.S language? Terrible and everyone could easily do better. But there's no easy to tell someone you don't believe in something they're putting their heart and soul into.
YC has the nicest rejection mails of all of VC-land and I've still seen YC-rejects get really angry and make it their life's work to prove pg wrong.
Are you sure these YC-rejects are building their companies just to prove pg wrong? They are probably just pursuing their dream, which is what led them to apply to YC to begin with. If they succeed, proving YC wrong is just a nice side-effect for them (see: http://lightsailenergy.com/ and others).
I often wonder of VCs actually have a secret website where they go on it, select from a half dozen drop boxes of platitudes they want to include, and then out spits a message along these lines. Over the years my inbox has gathered enough of them that I could probably extract most of the patterns.
Have you considered you're doing it wrong? If you asked out 100 girls and they all blew you off, it would be time for some introspection. VCs are just ugly girls with more money.
Someone had made something like that for internship reports, when I was in college. Very handy, when you needed a bonus paragraph here and there on "How this experience made me a better person".
Also generalizable. Email pattern-mining software, anybody? It would classify patterns within social groups as defined by LinkedIn and Facebook social network topography.
Vu, try this: "Hi. What are other companies in your batch we should invest in?" <- seriously, first question. I think our conversation ended shortly thereafter.
For those in various sub-threads arguing that this is simply polite, what's wrong with the following email?
-------------
Hi Paul,
Thanks for your note and sending ⟨startup⟩ our way, we really appreciate it and always enjoy meeting with YC founders. Keep 'em coming!
I see a lot of promise there, but it's not enough for us yet. We've offered to introduce ⟨founder⟩ to a few useful contacts.
As always, we value Y Combinator, and we appreciate this and future opportunities to invest, and to help YC companies. Our calendar is always open for coffee or whatever.
--jholman
-------------
It's half the length. But it's still polite, appreciative, etc.
I guess it depends on what the sender thinks of the recipient, with respect to narcissism and self-importance, and what kind of sucking up is predicted to be effective. When I read plausible sucking-up, I feel gratified. When I read implausible sucking-up, I feel manipulated.
I like this. I live in a country where exaggerated politeness is deeply ingrained, and redundant over-explanation common. I've been here long enough that it's rubbed off on me to where the original spoof message didn't really ring any alarm bells. Your rewrite is natural English without the BS. The only change I would make if I wrote it myself would be taking out "or whatever". I blame the fashion for that word to be used on its own disrespectfully - my brain often reads it as the British "wha'ever", or the US "whatEVVVVAAAARRRR".
This is really funny, because it is not far off from the "boilerplate" responses YC sends out to rejected YC applicants.
>We're sorry to say we couldn't accept your late application for
funding. Please don't take it personally. The chances of a late
application being accepted are much lower than for an application
submitted by the deadline.
If you want to apply again for the summer 2013 cycle, the application
form will probably be online within a few weeks.
Unfortunately we can't give you individual feedback about your
application. This page explains why:
Another reason you shouldn't take this personally is that we know
we make lots of mistakes. We have good statistical evidence that
we fail to interview a significant number of startups that we'd
accept if we did.
We're trying to get better at this, but it's practically certain
that groups we rejected will go on to create successful startups.
If you do, we'd appreciate it if you'd send us an email telling us
about it; we want to learn from our mistakes.
Remove "We should grab coffee" to "apply again" and "We'll be Circling Back" to "if We rejected you and you become successful, email us about it". In the case of the VC if I raise funding from another VC and you rejected me do you think I would let them "circle back around"?; or in the case of YC you think if my start-up becomes a billion dollar success I am really going to waste my time explaining to YC in an email where they went wrong rejecting me?
Thanks for your post and sending ⟨link⟩ our way, we really appreciate it and always enjoy reading about We'll Be Circling Back. Keep 'em coming!
We loved We'll Be Circling Back and are impressed by both it's background and the statement it makes. It's exciting to see entrepreneurs tackling "real-world" problems in important areas, which aligns well with our hacker interests.
However it's currently a little early for us to make a comment here. We'd like to see We'll Be Circling Back show a few more proof points and validate a couple of the core assumptions underlying the post. We've offered to introduce it to a few hackers, within our network, who we think could really analyze it and shape some of the strategic issues it'll face in the coming months. We plan on keeping in close touch and will be circling back once it's at a more appropriate stage for commenting.
On a separate note, I feel like we could be doing more to help Hacker News posters. We're in awe of what you've built over there at the Hacker News posting and we'd love to grab a coffee and talk more about how we could be helpful to both the posts and you.
I was totally confused reading through this the first time - it made me roll my eyes at least 5 times. Then I realized it was satirical and my faith in PG was once again restored.
This reminds me of the fearsome chapter in Launch Pad where Paul Graham is telling the founders of Science Exchange that VCs use any excuse when they dont like you as a reason not to fund in their case circumvention in this case "strategic issues and proof points". Which leads into another Paul Graham quote "Listen to the answer ,dont listen to the reason"
Also the investor couldnt have been more obvious with the fact that the real reason he emailed Paul was that he wants to get his claws in YC on a deeper level " keep em coming" "on a seperate note we feel we could be doing more to help YC companies" on a seperate note? really? Paul is a veteran at the VC game so trying to bait and switch him with all the "we loved him and where impressed but" nonsense is crazy to me. But its one of his partners so it might be just a simulation of the dozens of emails he gets like this on a daily basis
It’s been wonderful talking to you. We are pretty amazed by your team’s ___ chops and xxx.
We talked about the opportunity briefly during our meeting and would like to see a more fuller team and strategy around the product before getting into a deeper relationship.
Congrats on an incredible product and let me know if we would be any help to you along the way.
[+] [-] edw519|13 years ago|reply
To: Paul Graham
Hi Paul,
Thanks for your note and sending ?investor? our way, we really appreciate it and always enjoy meeting with YC followers. Keep 'em coming!
We loved ?investor? and are impressed by both his pedigree and the portfolio he has assembled thus far. It's exciting to see investors seeking "real-world" opportunities in important areas, which aligns well with our long-tail world view.
However it's currently a little early for us to get sidetracked here. We'd like to see ?investor? show a few more exits and demonstrate a more complete core understanding of our market. We've offered to introduce him to a few value-add founders within our network, who we think could really help him work through and grasp some of the technological issues fundamental to achieving a product/market fit in our industry. We plan on keeping in close touch and will be iterating back once he's at a more appropriate point to deserve equity from those who have worked so hard.
On a separate note, I feel like we could be doing more to help YC groupies. We're amazed at what people want to throw money at and we'd love to grab a coffee and talk more about how we could help investors better understand the opportunities we've poured so much of our hearts and souls into.
Best,
edw519
[+] [-] samiur1204|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] userulluipeste|13 years ago|reply
+1
[+] [-] Arjuna|13 years ago|reply
I couldn't help but chuckle at this as Harj even included the concept of "grabbing coffee", which is discussed in "Maker's Schedule, Manager's Schedule" [1]:
"Business people in Silicon Valley (and the whole world, for that matter) have speculative meetings all the time. They're effectively free if you're on the manager's schedule. They're so common that there's distinctive language for proposing them: saying that you want to 'grab coffee,' for example.
Speculative meetings are terribly costly if you're on the maker's schedule, though. Which puts us in something of a bind. Everyone assumes that, like other investors, we run on the manager's schedule. So they introduce us to someone they think we ought to meet, or send us an email proposing we grab coffee. At this point we have two options, neither of them good: we can meet with them, and lose half a day's work; or we can try to avoid meeting them, and probably offend them."
[1] http://paulgraham.com/makersschedule.html
[+] [-] cookiecaper|13 years ago|reply
Business is primarily a social thing. It always has been, and is no different today. This is why inferior products can make tons of money.
[+] [-] silentific|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] georgeorwell|13 years ago|reply
EDIT: Yep, I was misreading this. It wasn't so clear that it was an inside joke. I guess the joke's on me and the stereotypical non-partner VC, ha ha?
From Wikipedia:
Harjeet Taggar (born June 8, 1985), is a British businessperson and partner at the seed-stage investment firm, Y Combinator. He was formerly funded by Y Combinator and sold his company Auctomatic to Canadian company Live Current Media at age 22.
In 2010 he was named as the first new partner at Y Combinator since its founding in 2005, aged 25. In 2011 he was named on the Forbes 30 under 30 list.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harjeet_Taggar
[+] [-] dangrossman|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jcampbell1|13 years ago|reply
This is an inside joke. Harjeet is imitating how VCs typically respond to YC when YC asks the VC for feedback on a meeting with the startup founders.
[+] [-] ralphleon|13 years ago|reply
"On a separate note, I feel like we could be doing more to help YC companies. We're in awe of what you've built over there at the Y and we'd love to grab a coffee and talk more about how we could be helpful to both the companies and you."
Is the reason you should know this is satire.
[+] [-] hugs|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dsl|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kiyoto|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|13 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] Tzunamitom|13 years ago|reply
After working in Big 4 management consulting jobs for almost six years, I'm constantly surprised that phrases like "value-add" and "validate a couple of the core assumptions" still have the power to bring me out in a cold sweat.
But what is it going to take to end this nonsense? We know we're talking rubbish. Most of us hate these stock business-speak phrases, yet still most of us choose to hide behind them. Clients are partly to blame, but an industry that tries to differentiate itself by the bizarreness of its terminology (thereby fabricating "exclusivity")is more to blame.
When are we going to wake up and realise that speaking in plain, simple, understandable English does not make us look stupid and simple. Quite the opposite.
[+] [-] tokenadult|13 years ago|reply
"I sent the YC partners an email saying I was growing increasingly impressed with one of the startups in the current batch and asking what they thought of them, and Harj Taggar replied with this brilliant piece of VC boilerplate."
The joke is on the people who think that Taggar was expressing what he thinks, rather than what he has heard too many venture capitalists say when they aren't willing to say what they think.
[+] [-] redschell|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] geoka9|13 years ago|reply
In my experience, this kind of speak is not about sounding sophisticated, it's usually about saying nothing while coming across as sophisticated. I see this from business folks all the time; you rarely see it from technical people, but when you do, it's very annoying.
[+] [-] julespitt|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kyro|13 years ago|reply
Would love to hear your thoughts on this space.
[+] [-] dbuxton|13 years ago|reply
Sent from my mobile device. Please excuse typos.
[+] [-] yogo|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kevinalexbrown|13 years ago|reply
<strike>I suppose that's part of the joke, though like some good jokes it makes me sad. We get upset that VC's respond with boilerplate and knee-jerk, but then we do the same thing.</strike>
Update: egh, looks like we're not doing too badly.
[+] [-] Mahn|13 years ago|reply
Even if it sounds impersonal and lazy, this is just called being polite, most people still prefer an answer of this kind to "lol no, sorry, you suck". And that's why we do it aswell. Perhaps we should work more on make it seem less impersonal, but the message is clear and loud in any case.
[+] [-] antirez|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rrrrtttt|13 years ago|reply
The writing is pretty much WYSIWYG...
[+] [-] sixtypoundhound|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sriramk|13 years ago|reply
- They don't want to invest for reason {X}. Could be as trivial as someone not liking the founder or they could genuinely think they don't know whether the company will do well.
- They don't want to tell the founders what they really think. Mostly because they want to hold open the option in case they are proven wrong as often happens. As much as founders say they like honest replies, I've seen so many founders say "VC X said he doesn't want to invest in us because he disagrees with us on {reason}- I'm going to prove that moron so wrong".
- They want to help out the founder with a couple of intros so that the founder doesn't feel like he got nothing from them in return.
The boilerplate/corporate B.S language? Terrible and everyone could easily do better. But there's no easy to tell someone you don't believe in something they're putting their heart and soul into.
YC has the nicest rejection mails of all of VC-land and I've still seen YC-rejects get really angry and make it their life's work to prove pg wrong.
[+] [-] eric_bullington|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] richardjordan|13 years ago|reply
I often wonder of VCs actually have a secret website where they go on it, select from a half dozen drop boxes of platitudes they want to include, and then out spits a message along these lines. Over the years my inbox has gathered enough of them that I could probably extract most of the patterns.
[+] [-] dsl|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Wilya|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] xianshou|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sixtypoundhound|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wh-uws|13 years ago|reply
I know I do (textfile of course) for useful shell commands and the like
[+] [-] gfodor|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vu0tran|13 years ago|reply
[Explain how your startup will make 90 billion dollars in the first year]
I'm sorry, I've already invested into too many companies, but if you know any other Y Companies, I would love to speak to them.
[+] [-] kirillzubovsky|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jholman|13 years ago|reply
-------------
Hi Paul,
Thanks for your note and sending ⟨startup⟩ our way, we really appreciate it and always enjoy meeting with YC founders. Keep 'em coming!
I see a lot of promise there, but it's not enough for us yet. We've offered to introduce ⟨founder⟩ to a few useful contacts.
As always, we value Y Combinator, and we appreciate this and future opportunities to invest, and to help YC companies. Our calendar is always open for coffee or whatever.
--jholman
-------------
It's half the length. But it's still polite, appreciative, etc.
I guess it depends on what the sender thinks of the recipient, with respect to narcissism and self-importance, and what kind of sucking up is predicted to be effective. When I read plausible sucking-up, I feel gratified. When I read implausible sucking-up, I feel manipulated.
[+] [-] JDGM|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] will_brown|13 years ago|reply
>We're sorry to say we couldn't accept your late application for funding. Please don't take it personally. The chances of a late application being accepted are much lower than for an application submitted by the deadline.
If you want to apply again for the summer 2013 cycle, the application form will probably be online within a few weeks.
Unfortunately we can't give you individual feedback about your application. This page explains why:
http://ycombinator.com/whynot.html
Another reason you shouldn't take this personally is that we know we make lots of mistakes. We have good statistical evidence that we fail to interview a significant number of startups that we'd accept if we did.
We're trying to get better at this, but it's practically certain that groups we rejected will go on to create successful startups. If you do, we'd appreciate it if you'd send us an email telling us about it; we want to learn from our mistakes.
Remove "We should grab coffee" to "apply again" and "We'll be Circling Back" to "if We rejected you and you become successful, email us about it". In the case of the VC if I raise funding from another VC and you rejected me do you think I would let them "circle back around"?; or in the case of YC you think if my start-up becomes a billion dollar success I am really going to waste my time explaining to YC in an email where they went wrong rejecting me?
[+] [-] daniel-cussen|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] samiur1204|13 years ago|reply
Thanks for your post and sending ⟨link⟩ our way, we really appreciate it and always enjoy reading about We'll Be Circling Back. Keep 'em coming!
We loved We'll Be Circling Back and are impressed by both it's background and the statement it makes. It's exciting to see entrepreneurs tackling "real-world" problems in important areas, which aligns well with our hacker interests.
However it's currently a little early for us to make a comment here. We'd like to see We'll Be Circling Back show a few more proof points and validate a couple of the core assumptions underlying the post. We've offered to introduce it to a few hackers, within our network, who we think could really analyze it and shape some of the strategic issues it'll face in the coming months. We plan on keeping in close touch and will be circling back once it's at a more appropriate stage for commenting.
On a separate note, I feel like we could be doing more to help Hacker News posters. We're in awe of what you've built over there at the Hacker News posting and we'd love to grab a coffee and talk more about how we could be helpful to both the posts and you.
Best,
Samiur
[+] [-] mikecuesta|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sama|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] phil|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|13 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] jgrahamc|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] OnyeaboAduba|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] quintin|13 years ago|reply
It’s been wonderful talking to you. We are pretty amazed by your team’s ___ chops and xxx.
We talked about the opportunity briefly during our meeting and would like to see a more fuller team and strategy around the product before getting into a deeper relationship.
Congrats on an incredible product and let me know if we would be any help to you along the way.
If you get it