The One Kind of Founder VCs Will Never Fund
I was a guest judge for a local startup pitch competition. It wasn’t a major event. More of a glorified practice session with only minor, non-cash prizes. It was the kind of thing that helps local entrepreneurs introduce themselves to the community while also giving them an opportunity to get valuable pitching experience and feedback.
One of the participating companies was co-founded by an entrepreneur I occasionally advise and know well. Since he was giving his startup’s pitch, I mentioned this connection to my fellow judges ahead of time and recused myself from providing any feedback one way or the other so as not to inadvertently influence other people’s opinions. That turned out to be lucky for my advisee because, halfway through the pitch, he made some claims about his company’s customer traction that I knew to be factually untrue based on previous conversations. In other words, he lied.
To be fair, they weren’t huge lies. He didn’t claim thousands more customers or millions of dollars in additional revenue… nothing like that. Just some small assertions about the state of his sales pipeline that made it seem more robust than I knew it to be.
“Why would he say that?” I wondered as he continued his pitch. Nothing during my past interactions with this particular entrepreneur suggested he was the kind of founder who…
