**Originally published 7/16/2013
It’s fun to bag on vcs (we deserve it). But some vcs ask silly questions. If you are a founding team, you’ve heard all of these at some point I’m sure. Hopefully at Promus Ventures we aren’t on this list:
What Silly VCs Say (and What Founders Think):
- “We are just slammed” (wow you must be good because we’ve got nothing going on here)
- “It will take us approx. six weeks to make a decision” (great, I’ll send you the TechCrunch article on our round then)
- “We’ll get back to you with our number” (ok, did we say you could be in the round?)
- “We are evaluating a bunch of startups in this space” (interesting bc we are evaluating a bunch of vcs)
- “I really think you should consider changing your focus” (then why exactly did you contact us?)
- “We will need to talk to your top 5 customers” (you’ll get a couple and like it)
- “Can we get a complete set of projected financials for the next five years?” (sure no problem if we had 5-yr projections)
- “We’d like to make some changes to the docs that have already been signed by the other lead investors” (thanks for correcting some of the missed punctuation)
- “Would be great to get whatever industry research you have” (let’s find a vc that we don’t have to educate)
- “We like to be involved” (super — what exactly do you mean by involved?)
- “We’re going to unfortunately have to pass — just don’t have the bandwidth to properly focus on the opportunity” (thx — appreciate the detailed feedback)
- “We’ll have to pass but would love for you to keep us updated us on your progress” (ok we’ll be certain to add that to our list of things to do)
