John Dvorak’s got sand in his pussy again


See his latest grumpy piece here. Old assface went to some Churchill Club meeting and was disappointed by the predictions made by John Doerr, Steve Jurvetson, Roger McNamee and Joe Schoendorf. Dvorak says these famous VCs just stated the obvious and it wasn’t worth the price of admission. He concludes that “the tech scene in Silicon Valley is a rudderless ship.”

Now, please, don’t get me started on VCs and private equity guys. These are people who make a living by finding great entrepreneurs with terrific ideas, and then screwing them out of their companies. That and flogging garbage to dopey investors in the public markets. It’s not their job to think big ideas. Their job is to find other people with big ideas, and then rob them. Geddit? They’re the money. That’s all. And John, perhaps it has occurred to you that the key to being an effective swindler involves not telling other people what you’re thinking. Asking VCs where they want to invest is like asking a three-card monte guy to tell you which one is the money card. Man, John. Wake up. How long have you been covering this stuff?

The real stupid move was putting a bunch of VCs on a stage in the first place. The only reason VCs go to Churchill Club events is to lure in the poor desperate suckers who rush up afterward hoping to sell their souls. That and the fact that the one thing these bigshot VCs love most is listening to themselves talk. Why do you think Roger carries so many phones? Who do you think he’s talking to on three lines at once? Have you not figured this out yet? He’s calling himself! He’s telling himself what a great job he’s doing.

Here’s the thing. No matter how rich you get, the one thing you can never get enough of is adulation. (Trust me on this. Why do you think I’m still going to MacWorld?) The other thing that never gets old is taking advantage of someone who really, really needs your money. Half the acquisitions I do have nothing to do with the technology. It’s just a chance to frig with some poor bastard and see what he’ll do for the money. Will he sit up and beg? Will he eat cat food on a cracker? Most of the time we don’t even make the deal; just have a bunch of meetings, mess with the dude’s head and send him home. Or sometimes we actually do buy the guy’s company and then after the deal is closed we throw out the technology and lock him up with a non-compete. Yeah. It’s great to be rich. I’m not gonna lie to you about that.