Silicon Valley “Shadiness”
Bernard 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.
