Met with a celebrity VC that quietly also runs a media roll up business. They gave me 7 verbals, via email, phone, Zoom, that they wanted to invest with the condition that I also advised for their media arm.
Every time we got into numbers, they stopped responding.
The final straw was when they texted over a weekend to ask to hop on a call to work through things. I responded right away offering to hop on right away. Ignored. Two more follow ups that day. Ignored.β¨β¨I finally told them the round was closed.
The best part is, this is what they responded with:
βWe donβt invest in media.β Wow.
I was once pitching in a board room at a top 3 VC firm for a $15M Series A.
12 people in the meeting. One of the GPs fully fell asleep. Out cold for 30 minutes. Nobody acknowledged it. Everyone just kept going.
I kept presenting my Series A slides to an unconscious man in a Herman Miller chair and somehow that was considered normal. That's venture capital.
You might fly across the country to perform for people who may or may not be conscious.
It's a dance.
And sometimes you lead and sometimes you follow and sometimes your partner is unconscious.
If you're raising right now, just know: every founder has a story like this. The process is weird. The power dynamic is weird. You're not crazy for thinking it's weird.
No one talks about it because they want to continue raising. But I'm happy to stick my neck out there.
It is weird.
