7 karma · joined March 15, 2026
One thing I didn't mention in the post. The girl he was flirting with? I actually know her and her guy. She's the one who asked me to come meet this LP. Sitting there watching him flirt with her, tell her she should build alone and he'd back her, her passing him gum, him half on his phone — wasn't a great watch. She showed me his LinkedIn. Yale PhD in math, no funding mentioned, no background in entrepreneurship. Just wanting to flirt with her. I left.
He couldn't say anything to me directly. All the peacocking was for her and for the young game dev founder he was grilling. Then he turned to that founder and told him he doesn't need to raise funds, trying to pull him down just to look smart, and I lost it internally.
I've been in gaming 10 years. First 2 bootstrapped, building games for other companies. Got funding in year 4, through an accelerator, because the total annual VC money in India right now is roughly what Anthropic raised in the previous round.
So when he turned and told the guy "you don't need VC money, you're not ready," I jumped in to defend him.
At some point she told me he'd said something about my product too — that I don't need an ICP, that I shouldn't focus on one user. Our traction came from neurodivergent kids who loved the product. We teach real-life skills through games — originally aimed at young adults, but neurodivergent kids especially get a lot from it, because reading social cues, setting boundaries, body language, negotiation, all of that is harder for them, and games are a low-stakes way to practice. Meanwhile he was acting like some YC advisor or LP, showing off and telling everyone what to do.
I don't know why I'm this upset. Maybe my ego, maybe I just really wanted to shut him up in the moment and didn't. Just hated everything about him, his energy, all of it.
Thanks for listening, orionblastar. Made a real difference. :)
Our pos 5 just started calling plays. didnt argue, didnt mute, just "smoke in 30" and "ill ward their jungle, go." something about how calm he was made the carry stop typing and start playing. we won that game. nobody added each other after. just five strangers who pulled it together for 40 minutes and moved on.
Dota does this thing where it forces you to cooperate with someone whos actively hostile to you, in real time, with your mmr on the line. thats a very different kind of social experience than a peaceful lobby where everyone just decided to be nice.
How: Like any other skill practice if you were in that kind of situation and you were stuck and trying to do sudo runs as if it was real and getting the right muscle memory.
Just working in it