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It was this message, posted on X in May, that earned Panos Papadopoulos a retweet from the popular “VCs Congratulating Themselves” account, which often racks up thousands of likes and shares for drawing attention to cringey or self-important moments in the tech industry.
But instead of feeling embarrassed by the public call-out, Papadopoulos — who is a partner at VC firm Marathon Venture Capital in Athens — really enjoyed it. “It's a badge of honour,” he told me. “There is too much entitlement, bad takes and God syndrome in VC, so it is great to have someone grounding people and having some fun.”
The account’s viral posts are devoured by the people who love tech and those who love to hate it. The account — which is run by a guy in the US who prefers to stay behind the curtain — bites at everything from zealous European tech lawmakers to tech folks’ habit for overly earnest thoughts. Having a pop at tech media is also part of the fun.
Tech often needs little help satirising itself, of course. Most of the egregious stuff happens — where else? — on LinkedIn, home of posts like: “I proposed to my girlfriend this weekend. Here's what it taught me about B2B sales.” (So popular was this particular post that it quickly spawned imitators, like: “I proposed to my girlfriend this weekend and she said ‘No’. Here's what it taught me about B2B churn.”)
I asked a former Sifted colleague-turned-VC if he thought other investors would be as zen as Papadopoulos after getting rinsed online. As a relative newbie in the industry, Chris Sisserian — now head of platform at London VC firm Manta Ray — has been able to identify a few different camps. “You’ve got the VC sceptics — ex-founder/operator types who enjoy their particular subject focus but aren’t too excited about the asset class itself. Then there’s the die-hard fans who think VC is the best thing since sliced bread and aren’t able — willing? — to see some of the inherent oddities in the industry,” he says. “Those in between recognise it’s just an industry like any other with good/bad actors.”
What the buttoned-up VC types might not realise, however, is that being a bit looser on social media and getting dunked on for your troubles isn’t all that bad, as Francesco Perticarari, managing partner at Silicon Roundabout Ventures, recently discovered. He wrote a post about the lessons founders and investors could glean from 16-year-old Lamine Yamal, football’s newest wonderkid, which was quickly picked up by another popular satirical site called Litquidity — to the delight of Perticarari’s friends and work contacts.
“I'm officially a cringe tech bro, yeah!!” Perticarari wrote when he discovered the internet was mocking him. I messaged him to find out more. Appearing on Litquidity “turned a post that was doing pretty badly into a sensational piece,” he told me. “My follower count went up and the real people I am interested in found it funny and engaged even more with my work.
“So, as far as I am concerned, even if their piece made fun of my post, I was happy to laugh at it and enjoy whatever publicity it brought.”
For one last perspective on the value of VC bashing, I turned to another former-colleague-turned-VC (that Sifted to VC pipeline, huh!). Amelie Bahr, an investor at GMPVC in Berlin, says, "Trolling is gratifying to those who are perplexed, if not irritated, by investors aggrandising themselves online. It's also good for the trolled, who get their voices amplified. In that sense, it might be the most underrated unifying force in the tech world."
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