Comment by mtlynch | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mtlynch | Hacker News Reader

Where did this data come from?

I had to dig five links deep before I got an answer. DocSend is a service that allows founding teams to send pitch decks to investors. DocSend invited founding teams to participate in this research.[0] It's worth noting that they don't seem like they asked for consent from the VCs whose browsing behavior they observed for this study.

In DocSend's privacy policy[1], the VCs are Viewers, whereas the founding team is the User. DocSend apparently allows Users to give consent on behalf of the Viewers:

>If you are a Viewer who views Content you receive from a User via the Service, we automatically collect information about your interaction with such Content and our Service. The information we collect includes: Whether or not a you have viewed or are viewing Content; Date and time you viewed the Content; Number of times and length of time Content was viewed; Which portions of the Content were viewed; and Your IP address and location.

[0] https://docsend.com/view/my4w3gf

[1] https://www.docsend.com/privacy-policy/

Thanks for this. DocSend needs to walk that fine line between pissing VCs off and collecting useful data/insights.

Super interesting position they take.

The survey/research is done with explicit opt-in from the founders and all of the viewer data is aggregated and anonymized.

Not a VC but if I was I would never click a DocSend link. And VCs hold a lot of power — sure they are all chasing deal flow but if they just responded “I don’t click pitch links, send me a PDF” they would get their PDF 99 times out of 100.

I'm not sure why this is getting downvoted, but this is a pretty popular perspective in general, let alone VC. Many high-profile folks don't care about your links or secure sites or what have you, they just want the PDF or PPT file.

They also generally want the ability to keep it and show it to others, even if you don't want them to. Classic display of power.

I'm an investor and I don't love clicking on the docsend links, but I will. I really dislike clicking on linktracked links, especially from a cold pitch.

The worst part of docsend for me is I will get an email saying "check out our new thing" and then I click on it sometime later to look at it again and it's already expired. Or I remember, "hey that deck about xxxyyy, other investor zzz should talk to them" and I can't search for it because there was zero content in the email.

And founders don’t like it when a VC forwards their deck to a competing portfolio company.

Yes. This is one of the worst products (most invasive) I have seen. I would hate to be sent a docsend link

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