The story about the office reminds me of one of the smartest people I have ever worked with, an investment banker.
His job was to research, audit and credit check companies in developing economies. He told me how within a few minutes of walking to the lobby of a company headquarters he could with some accuracy judge how the business was operated.
Lavish spending on insignificant things was a sign that there were inefficiencies or problems elsewhere. for eg. in one case a Russian investment fund had a large 3-level high marble lobby with a large bronze statue of the founder. Turned out that they were hundreds of millions in debt rather than wildly profitable as they had mis-priced assets.
The other anecdote he shared was that there seemed to be a high correlation between businesses that hired young, attractive secretaries in short skits and accounting fraud.
You're simply wrong. Earlier this year I did the full tour of Sand Hill Road and ultimately raised an A round led by Andreessen Horowitz, considered by many entrepreneurs to be the "top" fund today (whatever that means). The top funds tend to have strikingly competent and professional admins. I don't know who you've pitched, but I don't see any particular evidence of your claim about youth and beauty.
That's not why I'm downvoting you though. I'm downvoting you because you used the phrase "past her best" to refer to women that you don't find attractive. The time when that kind of language was acceptable in our industry has long passed (actually it was never acceptable, only tolerated.) This is a topic that is frequently discussed on HN, and as a HN reader of over a year, you have no excuse for not being on notice.
All of the VCs I've talked to had very well-dressed and professional appearing support staff who were also highly competent. (I was curious if it was a job for people who wanted to go into other VC roles later, or a professional support track, or what, because they seemed to get much better quality staff than most other kinds of businesses. Maybe they just pay well?)
PE and "family offices" is the only place I've seen "almost exclusively young, attractive, inexperienced" support staff who were probably selected for reasons other than professional competence (attractiveness or nepotism).
> saying that if the admin is unattractive then it's not a good VC.
That's now what he said though. He just mentioned his observation that not so good VCs have less good-looking admins. Correlation != causation yada yada.
His job was to research, audit and credit check companies in developing economies. He told me how within a few minutes of walking to the lobby of a company headquarters he could with some accuracy judge how the business was operated.
Lavish spending on insignificant things was a sign that there were inefficiencies or problems elsewhere. for eg. in one case a Russian investment fund had a large 3-level high marble lobby with a large bronze statue of the founder. Turned out that they were hundreds of millions in debt rather than wildly profitable as they had mis-priced assets.
The other anecdote he shared was that there seemed to be a high correlation between businesses that hired young, attractive secretaries in short skits and accounting fraud.