That was the first thing I thought when I saw this.
I tried starting a business my freshman year with a professor. The entire time my dad, a guy who has failed starting up businesses as many times as he has succeeded, just kept saying "Get the papers signed, get the papers signed, where are the papers, what are the numbers, how do you know he won't screw you over?" It went on for a couple of months until the professor finally cut me out. My dad had seen it coming from the very beginning and tried to tell me, but since I was young and smarter than him and gonna be really awesome early on in my life and and and and I ignored him.
I imagine some VC's are pretty much like the professor multiplied by like 50 million dollars of institutional money. Get the smart naive kids to make them money and then screw them out of the reward ASAP. (Other VC's are, of course, probably really awesome people who hate the reputation they have.)
> but since I was young and smarter than him and gonna be really awesome early on in my life and and and and I ignored him.
I feel your pain... Among my favorite Mark Twain quotes:
"When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years."
The trick is to be just be bitter enough that you won't let it happen again. But not so bitter that the situation doesn't have a chance to repeat itself, i.e. you are setup to really good things if you don't mess up.
I tried starting a business my freshman year with a professor. The entire time my dad, a guy who has failed starting up businesses as many times as he has succeeded, just kept saying "Get the papers signed, get the papers signed, where are the papers, what are the numbers, how do you know he won't screw you over?" It went on for a couple of months until the professor finally cut me out. My dad had seen it coming from the very beginning and tried to tell me, but since I was young and smarter than him and gonna be really awesome early on in my life and and and and I ignored him.
I imagine some VC's are pretty much like the professor multiplied by like 50 million dollars of institutional money. Get the smart naive kids to make them money and then screw them out of the reward ASAP. (Other VC's are, of course, probably really awesome people who hate the reputation they have.)