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Comment by tomphoolery

10 years ago

> The upper echelons of tech sure does share more similarities with high-finance then they would like to admit...

Where do you think they all came from?

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tomphoolery

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dennisnedry  10 years ago

I was under the impression that today's VC guys were tech startup founders themselves 15 years ago. Is that incorrect?

  • anon8418  10 years ago

    This is somewhat true. There are far more former founders in the VC ranks than 15-20-30 years ago when it was dominated by old-crust finance, old money types.

    That said, the vast majority of the new incoming class of VCs (think associates, VPs, etc.) are mostly freshly minted MBAs with 2-3 years of post college experience, typically spent at a management consultancy, investment bank (or related prestigious front-office work at PEs, HFs, etc.), or in corporate strategy for a F500.

    These people are definitely smart, with great pedigrees from the best schools. I'm just not sure they know a damn thing about the nitty gritty work of building a company. These are people who sat in boardrooms hunched over excel models and used to scheduling a million meetings to discuss strategy. Not rolling up their sleeves and executing.

    I say all of this as someone with this background and with many peers who fit this mold.