Silicon Valley “Shadiness”
December 4th, 2007 by Benjamin KuoBernard Moon, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur who was most recently at GoingOn Networks, just posted an interesting item talking about “shadiness” in Silicon Valley — specifically, the tendency of entrepreneurs to mention they are friends of notable people, or “in” with a venture firm, or otherwise to try to gain some credibility — when they’re not.
Although it’s not nearly as bad here, I do see this frequently in startup PowerPoint decks. In particular, I see this in the number of times I see companies including big name companies (Google, Yahoo, Oracle, and Microsoft come to mind) as “potential customers” or part of their pipeline. Anyone doing any kind of due diligence generally finds out how real this is, so it’s not of any benefit, and in fact a detriment, if you truly are looking to find funding, built partnerships, or sell your product (or to get good coverage in a technology publication)
I also occasionally have entrepreneurs tell me (always before they’ve raised a round of funding) that they’re talking to Sequoia, or some of the bigger firms down here, Redpoint/Clearstone/Mission Ventures/etc.–and found out that “talking” means that they’ve handed a card to an associate. Not very impressive, folks.
December 5th, 2007 at 5:33 pm
I don’t think this is limited to the Valley, but instead its just business. In fact, this practice is a cousin to the “optimistic” financial projections that people use when pitching their company. In the case of someone exaggerating their network, you have to (quietly or overtly) use the same grain of salt that a VC employs when evaluating a company’s financials. Assume its “optimistic” at best.