I enjoy working in coffee shops.
At the next table, an entrepreneur is pitching to an investor.
And the "investor" is giving advice on how to approach his round.
Every 3 words, 2 are in English.
Pitch deck, Venture Capital, Private Equity, Seed, Playbooks, Raise, Due Diligence, Appendix, Bootstrap, Grant, Feedback, 10X, Chief of Staff, SDRs.
He does not breathe between sentences. His face turns slightly red. The monologue is endless, stretching for at least 20 minutes without a single pause.
Nobody taught him the paragraph break. But he talks about "narrative."
The conceptual mess the "investor" has is brutal. His speech is like an infinite labyrinth in which he himself gets lost. But he is untouchable, because the "status" assigned to him for intermediating funds is incorrectly associated with knowledge.
The entrepreneur, for his part, listens attentively, eyes wide open, in absolute silence, with infinite patience, trying to figure out what is going on.
Inside, he convinces himself that the money he thinks he needs will never come. "There is too much he needs to learn."
When the investor's inexhaustible stream of words finally ceases, without having listened to anything, with the conviction of an expert and a firm gaze he closes with "I like your proposal."
And hope reopens. He keeps the funnel moving.
When will we end this farce once and for all?
VC is the closest thing to a Ponzi scheme. Would you like to know why?
You can start with this article I published in 2018: The hidden plot of the current startup ecosystem.
