Why you can't read a VC

Aren't you pretty much epsilon from term sheet as soon as you get the full partner meeting anyways?

This is so true! and agree with CapitalistCartr on cautiousness. I'd say that VCs have no reason to let you read anything.

They feel that if you improve your pitch based on their comments/questions you won't necessarily apply the pitch modifications to your strategy in your actual execution of the milestone or round they will fund. Whereas, if they just sit quiet and force you to jump through hoops to show your passion and commitment to them, they will get a sense of your dedication, you will get a sense that their cash rules your world, and they will get a a sense of who you really are and what you are committed to...

That's until they meet someone who understands that game and plays it better than they do. I have seen this happen at a company I worked with and where I participated in VC roadshows. Won't name the spin doctor in question, but boy was he good and bad all at once!

But the business school analogy of mutual learning through discussion was certainly wrong from the start.

"There is an idea of a Patrick Bateman, some kind of abstraction, but there is no real me, only an entity, something illusory, and though I can hide my cold gaze and you can shake my hand and feel flesh gripping yours and maybe you can even sense our lifestyles are probably comparable: I simply am not there."

Many corporate meetings are like that when meeting people outside one's own organization. Each side is cautious.

Did anyone else take the title to mean "reasons why you shouldn't read Fred Wilson's blog?" :)

Too true...