Rate, review and comment on any VC!!

Keep up the good work!!

The most interesting thing about Matt’s blog is that Hartenbaum himself responded to the post with the following:

“Howard Hartenbaum 05.3.07 | 7:30 pm
As the recipient of negative remarks, I have to comment that since “perception is reality” and if I was “rude and arrogant” then I was, in fact, rude and arrogant. I took the response to heart and pondered either (a) how can I improve (and not be rude and arrogant) or (b) how can I avoid being considered rude and arrogant. Regarding (a), I can ask entrepreneurs if they want direct blunt feedback, and if they say “yes” then assume they are man/woman enough to accept it realizing it is only my (one person’s) advice or regarding (b) I can simply listen, nod my head and then a week later say “it doesn’t meet our threshold for response” (i.e. vague worthless response to the entrepreneur). I thought my direct comments may be helpful to the entrepreneurs but maybe they didn’t want my help, just my money. At my prior company that focused on enabling enterprise use of customer feedback, a major lesson I learned is that many companies hide from feedback because the vocal and dissatisfied minority hijack the common voice and you can’t run your business solely concerned about those vocal minority of customers who are dissatisfied and likely will never be satisfied anyway.

I have to give credit to thefunded for opening my eyes to my behavior and I believe I will improve moving forward, but I don’t think thefunded provides a fair and open structure that appropriately opens the forum to provide properly structured and relevant data. Thefunded faces the challenge of turning data into something useful, and not just providing a handful of data points from a few “anonymous” (i.e. unwilling to stand up and provide direct feedback) minority data sources.

I also challenge the entrepreneurs who consider myself (or other VCs) to be rude and arrogant, to tell them to their face so that they can improve, rather than hiding behind an anonymous claim on a website.”
===

Now talk about a VC being introspective – if anything I applaud Howard for his willingness to admit the negative reviews may have had merit. The VC world has had a long run of their own version of “sustainable unfair advantage” in dealing with Techies, turned entrepreneurs, turned businessmen, turned C-level executives. So I’m all for anything that helps to level the playing field. Let’s face it, most entrepreneurs don’t have the background or experience to successfully navigate the funding maze. It’s a known fact that *some* VC’s leverage this naiveté to their own advantage.

I think allowing VC’s to respond is a great decision and should only help both sides create a more transparent and fair process.

Btw – I recently signed up as a member with TheFunded.com and agree with some of the other comments – the site needs more relative content. But it think it’s a great start.

The new VC profiles on TheFunded include reference investments, partner blog links, special investment terms, average deal closing time estimates, partner areas of focus, etc. Hopefully, these tools will help the entrepreneurs with better information to make the right decision, and, hopefully, VC’s will be responsive and fill out their profiles… From a VC perspective, you have the perfect audience at TheFunded of CEO’s looking for investment.

Some others have already commented about this, but, in terms of the negative reviews, most negative reviews have some pretty sound logic behind them. Example: canceling a longstanding meeting and dinner a couple hours beforehand while the CEO was in flight. The CEO lost a full day of work and all of the travel expenses. They backed out of the deal, too, adding insult to injury.

Net/Net: Best case, TheFunded becomes a real tool for both entrepreneurs and VC’s. Second best case, it’s a great tool for entrepreneurs and VC’s change their behavior to avoid negative feedback… Stay tuned, we shall see… Any other suggestions are welcome!

If you pick your VCs like you pick your restaurants, you deserve what you get.

If you don’t like the restaurant, you don’t go back. If you don’t like your VC, you’re stuck.

Reviews are only as good the people who make them.

As this type of a review site goes, it should be a great outside resource for the entrepreneur about to go talk with one of these VCs. We would have loved this type of a resource in past years when we were seeking funding.

Sure there are some negative reviews, but over time there will also plenty of positive ones. For every sizable enough group of people, there are a few naturally foul ones (read: fatalists and complainers), but many more decent ones.

Which means that most of the negative reviews should end up being warranted, and there should be plenty of positive reviews to offset the unwarranted ones. If you read someone’s bio and you see a dozen bad reviews and not a single good one, you might choose to stay away.

You can’t squash this type of stuff, the world is just becoming more transparent. As for the “negative review bias”, the market usually corrects itself in these situations.

Have an awesome day!
Dan

– Have / Inventer of internet / first 5 big companies and who started them … then the next generation of companies and where they came from / include colleges and vc’s / so relationships / blogs / recent news for each

– monetize with simple / adwords if needed – or make open source with donations. the WEBwiki.org or something of the effect

スタートしてから２ヶ月になるTheFundedがだいぶ論議を巻き起こしている。これは起業家が自分がアイディアを売り込んだベンチャーキャピタリストに関する印象や評価などをフィードバッ…

We had nothing but positive experiences with everybody we talked to and the list was pretty good. In fact, a few of them are now really great contacts and allies for us.

Maybe it’s because I’m a girl? (just kidding)