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Comment by orangethirty | Hacker News Reader

Brilliant. Takes guts to call out VCs like this. Now, I don't think your 6-month time period is the right data point to measure if they are a zombie or not. There are a lot of different reasons why VCs take short investment breaks, and the 6-month period does not allow for that. I think 18 months is more in line, because it allows you to see more of the failed investments and results overall. A zombie VC should be defined with a ratio of failed (money lost) VS. successful (money gained) deals. If they have a lower than average ratio then we can say that their confidence (and the confidence of their bankers) is down, and they are operating in Zombie mode.

But I'm probably wrong, because I am a value investor.

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I think that is another valuable thing to measure in terms of overall success and direction the fund is going, and I'd certainly like to. I was hoping this would help founders who are trying to raise Series A right now figure out where to focus first - but I agree taking a longer view would give a more complete picture. It just needs a bit more math and data, but I'm noodling on it.

I do agree that it helps, and accomplishes your goal. Though I don't think VCs will applaud your efforts too much (well, some may). They also go through slumps, and unlike entrepreneurs, they don't like to talk about it. It hurts their credibility due to how bankers always want to bet on the lucky horse.

Do we need to pander to VCs? I'm also not sure that your assertion that it hurts their credibility is true.

Fred Wilson has publicly admitted himself that he hasn't led a deal all year. I don't think that affects his reputation. If anything, I think people applaud him for his transparent efforts.

The VC industry works like stocks. Its more what people are believing than actual hard numbers. Speculation is the name of the game. And speculation is driven by hearsay. So, that is why traction is a popular term these days, and why "founders" hate to talk about actual money earned. You can hear them say But with more investment we can get more traction and thus leverage the market towards using our product. Which is wall street talk for We heard $some_company is going to close a huge deal. We can't say when exactly, but its going to happen. We want to leverage the current stock price to gain a couple of extra points when the sale goes through.

Smoke and mirrors.

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