How so? All you've done for yourself is create a hill you have to climb to right from the beginning. Investors, like founders, often have tight schedules and little time to make decisions. They have to make their decisions quickly, because they have 100 other people clambering to meet with them on getting their investments. You can't blame them if they write you off b/c you couldn't take the 1/2 hour before the meeting to freshen up...
Plus, in the start-up community it may seem to be more "acceptable" to dress casually for an important investor meeting that could change the trajectory of your company and maybe even destroy it, (sounds ludicrous when I say it that way), but in the public perception that is unacceptable. The goals for many companies is the get mass appeal and adoption, and if you're going to play the part of the founder/ceo/face of the company, you have to represent your company in a professional manner; if you can't do that in such an important investor meeting, what assurance does the vc/investor have that you can do it to the public.
Because an investor who thinks things like "just another hacker who doesn't understand the business aspect of a start-up" is likely to interfere with how a hacker-founder wants to run the company later.
In courtship, you should be grateful when the other person says something so egregious you could never stand to be with them. They just spared you a lot of trouble down the road.
Your view would make sense if founders didn't have a choice because all investors thought the same way. That's the world we used to live in, but not anymore.
I'm arguing that generally founders don't have a choice; Unless you have an unbelievably good product, and know the right people, the likelihood that you will get your start-up funded is unbelievably small. The start-up community is relatively small, the number of people in that community who are investors is even smaller; the pool of founders is very large. Many, if not most, founders know very little about investors and who they can reach out to. So their perception is that, if you need funding you take what you can get. Especially when you hear NO after NO... Beggars can't be choosers. Is it ideal, of course not, but it is what it is...
This is frustrating. It is indeed very hard to get a startup funded in 2012. But for first-time investors, getting funded has never had less to do with connections and dress code than it does now. That's what 'gruseom is saying.
You're also missing his larger point. You seem to think that not getting funded is the worst thing that can happen to a small business. No. Getting funded by the wrong people can be way worse. I think first-time entrepreneurs on HN need to get this fact through their head more than perhaps any other: it is worse to waste 1-2 years of your life on a DOA startup than it is to fail fast and get on to your next endeavor.
You will not get those years back.
It can be even worse than that: you can be 9-12 months into your DOA startup with your pathological dress-code-attentive investors, have a much better idea and a team capable of executing on it and not be able to pursue it because of your legal obligations to the investors.
Taking investors is in some ways worse than taking a full-time job. The law recognizes the real power dynamics in employer/employee relationships and, for instance, refuses to enforce noncompete contracts. The law sometimes views the relationship between founders and investors in exactly the opposite way.
Take on investors, by all means, if that's what's best for your business. But watch the heck out for psychos.
Well, ok I guess, if that's the world you live in. I observe things changing quite a bit more than that, but admittedly at different rates in different places. You know what, though? I'd rather work on making that unbelievably good product you mention than figure out how to make myself seem something I'm not. Lots of people are succeeding. Not all of them take funding.
Besides, if you make something great that people want, your chance of getting funded is not so small, because you can apply to YC, who are looking for people just like that and have none of the prejudices you describe.
That might increase the quality of what's coming out of YC, but it also means, as hard as the may try, they are always going to miss out on some potentially good teams/ideas/products.
