socialmedian: Hey VCs, it’s not your company!

User-submitted headlines for this story

Clip

Hey VCs, it’s not your company!

Source: VentureBeat

Nov 05, 2009

Summary

(Editor’s note: Brad Feld is an early stage investor and co-founder of Foundry Group. This post originally appeared on his blog.)

VCs say a lot of stupid things. I’m guilty of it plenty and whenever someone calls me on it I try to acknowledge and change. One that I try really hard not to do is say “my company” when referring to companies I’ve invested in – I think it’s one of the most annoying things a VC can say.

I was talking to a VC the other day about a few companies he had invested in. By the third time he referred to one of the companies as “my company” (as in “My company is working on X”, “My company would like to talk to Company Z about thing Y”) I felt myself starting to react. I didn’t really have a relationship with this VC, but I knew that he had never run a company (investment banking post college, MBA, then VC). I realized I wanted to stop him at some point and say “dude – it’s not your company – you are merely an 18 percent shareholder in the business.”

I bit my tongue and had the conversation, but I’ve been thinking about this in the back

...Read the full article

Comments (0)

Add Your Comment