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“You never know what’s going to come through the door,” Dave, a partner at the VC fund I worked at as an Entrepreneur in Residence, said to me. Then he continued by saying, “That’s one of the things I love about this work.”
We were walking to the “Big” conference room (so named because it was largest conference room we had) for another nameless startup’s Monday afternoon pitch to the partnership. As Dave and I walked into the conference room, the startup’s CEO and his executives were already there, six of them in total.
“That’s not a good sign,” I whispered to Dave, gesturing about the number of people the CEO had brought with him. Dave nodded his head in agreement.
The other partners made their way into the conference room. It was 1:05 PM. We were starting about five minutes late, so, in VC terms, we were reasonably on time.
The CEO stood up, and he started his presentation. Jim, one of the partners, said to him, “Before you get started, why don’t you tell us about yourself and your team.”
“I have a bad feeling about this one,” I whispered to Dave. Again, Dave nodded his head.
“Okay,” the CEO said. Then he started talking through his bio. Five minutes later, he was done. It would have been okay if he had stopped with himself, but then he…