If these are the reasons VCs choose not to invest in companies, then the reason VCs lie is because their reasoning is bullshit, and they don't want to get called out on it.
2. I'm sorry, but your response isn't even relevant to my response. I wasn't commenting on the VCs interviewing skills at all. I was commenting on nirvana's response.
3. This is the real world. In a perfect world, every candidate would be interviewed by the world's best interviewer that can see past all our weakness and only see all your strength (interviewees would want that, no?) Unfortunately, you work with what you have - not with what you wish you had.
Cheers.
2. You said we should give credit for the OP giving feedback, and that VCs lie because they don't like getting snarky responses. I am arguing that a) this response is deserving of a response like nirvana's because it reveals that VCs make judgments based on unquestioned biases and irrelevant details, and b) VCs don't give feedback because it would reveal that their processes are biased and based on irrelevant details.
3. Good candidates do not want interviewers who look past all their flaws, and that's not what I was trying to say. Good candidates want relevant feedback. "You're too old to do this job" is not relevant feedback. "You don't understand $x well enough to do this job" is great feedback.
Also, in the real world, there's bias and it sucks, and great candidates/founders will be aware of this, and work to combat it. That doesn't mean I'm going to throw up my hands and give up on trying to eliminate bias.
The essay jumps straight from interview behavior to a decision to not fund, leaving the reader to work out what is the assumption. There is simply no other reason the VC would consider such behavior important.
This would indicate that VCs, on average, make poor judgement on the quality of their investments. The use of arbitrary indicators and qualitative characteristics as a primary decision factor for who they invest in or not would seem to be contributory to their overall poor performance. Perhaps VCs should learn to resist their early (and probably incorrect) assumptions about entrepreneurs based on age, nervousness, or other factors and instead look to the underlying premise of the business and existing capabilities of the management team. Or at least they should realize that they are not particularly good evaluators of those characteristics, based on their past performance, and factor that in accordingly.
[1] http://www.kauffman.org/newsroom/institutional-limited-partn...
Unless maybe the VC is in irrational human being who has biases just like everyone else.
Unless they've actually done studies on whether fidgeting is a good indication of company performance, this statement is ludicrous.
