vcs

Attention over time

7-day rolling share of analyzed posts/comments mentioning this entity · 90 daily points ending 2026-08-06

Final complete day: 2026-08-06. Attention was 0.9% — this entity appeared in 15 of 1,744 analyzed posts/comments in the seven days ending that day (16 mentions).

Each point is a seven-day rolling window of complete UTC days; a point is comparable only when at least 100 analyzed posts or comments fall inside it. A day with no analyzed records counts as zero; missing coverage is marked and never shown as zero. The series ends at the latest complete analyzed day — it never extends into the current incomplete day. How attention is measured.

Recent mentions

1. 2026-08-06 21:50 UTCComment

   No, they absolutely expect a return. They also understand the high risk involved and diversify their investments. VCs are not in the business of giving money away. Neither are banks, nor any other investor. Any money taken should be done with the expectation to be returned with gains. If a VC doesn’t buy the pitch or the founders ability to execute, then they won’t deploy capital. The fact they invest in many moonshots doesn’t mean they don’t do so with the intent of seeing a return.

2. 2026-08-06 19:33 UTCComment

   > Then you’re being purposefully obtuse. Any sourced capital expects a return, unless its charity. Any business that takes money should expect to yield a result. Most VCs don't expect a return. They expect most of the startups they invest in to fail and hope that at least one breakout company covers their losses on all the failed investments. This is why you see VC investments into companies that have very shaky business models. A lot of them are hail mary plays.

3. 2026-08-06 18:16 UTCComment

   I guess different people define it differently but when I was in TechStars they talked about “zombie” companies as those in situations like where expenses are greater than income with no obvious remaining way to scale, but the founders are doing side consulting work to pay the bills. It was describing businesses that have effectively gone out of business, but the founders are doing creative things to pretend they haven’t. Thats very different from companies that morph into lifestyle businesses. TechStars management was very clear that they, as investors, must consider that a failure state, but we, as founders, shouldn’t necessarily do the same. A lifestyle business is very much alive and not undead, it simply isn’t what the VCs wanted.

4. 2026-08-06 16:41 UTCComment

   Again, most founders would kill for those numbers. Of course who doesnt want to grow more. But VCs who have lost absolutely everything on most investments, I would argue would be content with those numbers as well. Most founders/investors are not raising/investing at $100M. That just headline bias.

5. 2026-08-06 15:30 UTCComment

   Percent of companies that return cash doesn't take into account magnitude. Seems odd to have to spell that out as it's VC 101. 90% failure rate is perfectly acceptable if the 10% covers the losses and more. Quick check against a16z saw 22% return on average for investors. Obviously that's a tier 1 firm, many VCs don't do that well but I don't inherently see this as problematic from a business standpoint. Source: