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In The Media

How to Charm Hot, Rich and Dumb VCs

by Larry Chiang on December 2, 2014

By Larry Chiang

Have you met me?! I can charm the pants off people.


image.jpeg
C3PO is tall, pretty, speaks eloquently and a protocol droid… JUST LIKE A VC!!
You can’t charm a VC by showing them how smart you are. They went to college before GitHub was a twinkle. They think Stack Overflow is the dB mechanism at TransUnion* [*The Pritzker family was near the University of Illinois but couldn’t get on the Engineering quad from “New Trier”]

Larry Chiang (@LarryChiang)
VCs are kinda dumb. We all know!! But VCs wanna see the attitude: “This ain’t my first rodeo”


You charm a VC by showing them how fast you execute. Rodeos have a bucking bull. The mechanical bull at Old Pro has a pattern you can memorize. Charm a VC as a CS major by executing one or two “pop up internships”.

Larry Chiang (@LarryChiang)
Worried CEOs won’t take you seriously cuz you’re a soph in CS + look 12?! “PG” has an essay-excerpt-snippet that applies to U :-]


Do you think pantless charming comes from how well you execute a coffee meeting!?  It doesn’t. 


VCs wanna know that you as two or 3 CS majors exhibit “Patrick Collison and his brother John Collison” tendencies. 

In the Jessica Livingston book, “Founders at Work”, the YC partners spoke of how YC founders would talk on their smartphone using the “telephone verbal feature”. They’d “talk and auditorily communicate” before they met old people in person. 


Larry Chiang (@LarryChiang)
Pretending to be older has never been easier


Download the Jeesica Livingston PDF and in the comments, put what page you found it. 

(I would and could quote book and verse of “Founders at Work”, but won’t)

Larry Chiang (@LarryChiang)
See that CTOs look quizzically at CS undergrads ‘pitching’?! “PG” has an essay-excerpt-snippet that applies to U :-]


“Do Things That Dont Scale” #dttdsBHM


Larry Chiang (@LarryChiang)
If you’re 19 but wanna be paid like a 32 year old in CS, you’ve the skill. But do u have the social engineering skillzz


Download THE GigaOm article: “How to close a deal over VOICEMAIL”

Larry Chiang (@LarryChiang)
Before you eschew old tech, know that the great @sequoia and @dishdash bottleneck $1,000,000,000 onto fax machines #Constraint #Industri …


[DishDash was lec 7, #CS183B] 


Sequoia orders food via fax WEEKLY. It’s a Venture Capital firm in Menlo Park CALIF. they’re good. 

Larry Chiang (@LarryChiang)
Imagine yourself with a laser blaster. Remember, Han Solo +blaster  vs Yoda + light sabre = Jedi wins. 

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