Would you mind expanding upon this, detailing the exploitation:

"It was only after Steve Jobs exploited their preferential attachment & tendency of VC to succumb to herding effects that he was given investment."

There is a very good documentary called Something Ventured[1].

It's really good. I think everyone into Startups must watch this. It's not second hand narration but the real VCs them selves telling the stories so I find it very reliable.

So in the documentary there is a section about VCs meeting Steve Jobs & Wozniak for the first time.

They passed on the investment saying that they were "not impressive".

One of the VCs (that refused to invest) was begged to show up at some computer conference to see how people were interacting with the Apple Computer.

The VC saw a very huge crowd of people around the Apple booth waiting for a turn to use the Apple computer.

The VC then completely changed his mind & decided to invest in Apple. When he did so, even the likes of Don Valentine now begged to enter the round.

My suspicion is that the crowd was artificial, Steve Jobs knew that if he could prove (or construct) some kind of hype around his Apple computer at the conference. It would conjure fear of missing out in the VCs or something akin to traction.

Note that everything else remained the same the product, the founders etc. He just added an ounce of hype.

[1]: https://youtu.be/7eV2L7CHCSQ?feature=shared

The longer you work in tech industry, you will viscerally "feel" just how rare Steve Jobs was as a talent.

he had an amazing feel for mass consumer psyche ("taste") and along with a good dose of charisma

FOMO is the number 1 VC trait to exploit.

Even if you think a founder is not impressive, if you see an impressive product you are more likely to take the bet. It’s the same old “sales cures all” sentiment where many organizational dysfunctions can be tolerated if the company’s products are in demand

so he was good at marketing

There's a famous old photo of the first Microsofties[0], and is often captioned by "Would You Invest?"

[0] https://i.insider.com/53ad82026bb3f7237a3347bf?width=800&for...

They were ex-Ivy league and friends from college. They fit into the current investor meta perfectly

i'll play devils advocate: what if getting shot down hard by a few respected investors was a push to improve / get slicker with their approach?

VCs or Record companies missing "Superstars" is as common as mud.

Here is a fun article showing everyone makes errors. https://medium.com/mba-chronicles/the-vc-antiportfolio-top-m...

Record companies are the worst. They use the same “spray and pray” strategy as the VCs but charge the artists money to mitigate their risk. Monopolies…