Can I upvote you twice? I don't understand why this is such a hot topic. If a VC asks for money to pitch, kindly thank them for their time and walk away.
I suspect that people want to protect each other by raising an alarm here... honestly, if you need someone to tell you not to pay to pitch, you have bigger problems.
TheFunded has pretty stupid membership requirements though. If I recall correctly, they require you to submit your business plan as part of the sign-up procedure. I think that's worth boycotting them along with the pay-to-pitch groups.
The requirement is to provide some kind of proof, in the form of a linkedin profile or the bio page of a startup, that you are indeed the founder of a startup.
Hmm, that's what I remembered when I tried to join about 18 months ago. I've tried again now and it didn't ask for all that detail, so it might have changed, or my memory could be flawed.
You are actually describing (part of) a perfect market - a free market is just one without economic intervention and regulation by government except to regulate against force or fraud.
(Thanks to Wikipedia for the description.)
I would like to see more perfect markets or near-perfect markets but curiously enough they tend only to be stable with government intervention. A good example is the UK retail DSL market which was essentially created by regulation and has a very high degree of competition (and low prices!) within the constraints of the wholesale environment that contains it.
That's where I think governments do their best work - setting up clear rules that cause the interests of companies and the public to be aligned, then letting "the market" perform within that rule framework.
Thank you for saying this more clearly than I could have. The HN fervor has demonized this practice, which is surprising to me as I had expected a more free market opinion from aspiring entrepreneurs. If price < chance * amount, paying to pitch is actually a sound investment. I assume that the numbers don't work out in this way, but we should aspire to have a reasoned opinion.
Exactly. If my screening process was so good and my investors were so active that I had a 70% investment rate, I'd happily put my price tag at the top of a page that had a list of all the funded companies and investors that put in $$. What Jason has dug up though is that the investors at these forums don't pay dues because the entrepreneurs aren't very good, just desperate. And since the investors don't pay, the forum has to accept any startup willing to pay the fees.
This is very naive. The investor / con artist can report any attractive numbers they feel like - who is going to keep them honest?
I strongly suspect that investors who change to be pitched are in fact scam artists who do just enough investment to plausibly deny that they are in fact scam artists while taking in huge amounts of cash from ignorant start-ups and forcing the start-ups that do agree to receive investment into contracts that strongly favor the investors.
I'm sorry, but charging to pitch fails the common sense test; it is little more than a way of separating fools from their money.
In practice I fully agree. I was just playing devil's advocate describing a situation where it would be justifiable to pay to pitch. The conditions you'd have to meet would be referenceable clients, both entrepreneurs that got funding + active, known investors with a public track record.
TechCrunch50 is probably the closest to this - they get a rich pool of applicants because of the publicity + prize + success of previous winners and presenters. But they don't charge.
It is his blog. He puts quick stuff here, longer stuff at calacanis.com. This one has stuff about his vacations, his HOA, etc in addition to quick tech stuff.
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[ 4.0 ms ] story [ 64.1 ms ] threadI suspect that people want to protect each other by raising an alarm here... honestly, if you need someone to tell you not to pay to pitch, you have bigger problems.
The requirement is to provide some kind of proof, in the form of a linkedin profile or the bio page of a startup, that you are indeed the founder of a startup.
Jason is helping the free market by giving it access to better information.
Thats pretty idealistic. I say we have never had perfect information, and yet the world doesn't end.
(Thanks to Wikipedia for the description.)
I would like to see more perfect markets or near-perfect markets but curiously enough they tend only to be stable with government intervention. A good example is the UK retail DSL market which was essentially created by regulation and has a very high degree of competition (and low prices!) within the constraints of the wholesale environment that contains it.
I strongly suspect that investors who change to be pitched are in fact scam artists who do just enough investment to plausibly deny that they are in fact scam artists while taking in huge amounts of cash from ignorant start-ups and forcing the start-ups that do agree to receive investment into contracts that strongly favor the investors.
I'm sorry, but charging to pitch fails the common sense test; it is little more than a way of separating fools from their money.
TechCrunch50 is probably the closest to this - they get a rich pool of applicants because of the publicity + prize + success of previous winners and presenters. But they don't charge.