My morning started early with a 6:30 a.m. drive to Denver to give a talk about Give First: The Power of Mentorship, which Erik Mitisek had organized for a group of Denver-area founders.

In it, one of Erik’s questions caused me to go off on a riff about authenticity, which led me to one of the Techstars Mentor Manifesto items titled Be Authentic—Practice: What You Preach and a section in the book titled Nonsense Phrases Such as “I’m Value Added”. I gave the example in the section Being Full of Value‑Added Shit and explained that when I hear someone say “I’m an (adjective) (noun)” I insert (in my brain) the word “not” after the word “I’m.” From the book:

I’m amused when someone says, “I’m authentic,” “I’m transparent,” “I’m founder-friendly,” or “I’m a value-added investor.” Whenever I hear something like that, I automatically insert the word “not” between “I’m” and the rest of the phrase.

I’m suspicious whenever someone says, “I’m an (adjective) (noun).” Why did you need to say, “I’m a great tennis player,” “I’m a deep thinker,” or “I’m a generous person”? Instead, why not simply play tennis, regardless of how great you are? Or think as deeply as you want? Or be generous?

I’ve followed it up with two more Techstars-related talks, where I used this example again. In the last talk, I said, “I think I’ll make that today’s blog.” So – here’s the story.

“Hmm,” I thought to myself.

I had just watched a video interview with a famous VC. Although I didn’t know him, I was friendly with several founders who had worked with him and knew of at least one of the situations he had described.

The VC’s verbal fillers took up the first 30 minutes of the interview. There were plenty of “Honestly” and “To tell you the truth” woven in between “I’ll be transparent about what happened” and “The best
founders are authentic to their true selves.”

One of his stories, which I was familiar with, didn’t feel right. I knew the founder/CEO of the company he described and thought she’d had a particularly rough time with this VC. However, the VC’s preamble was, “In difficult situations, I’m always transparent about what will happen with the founder. That way, they have an opportunity to challenge or correct me.”

I emailed my founder-CEO friend to ask about the situation. I told her I’d just seen an interview with the VC in which he discussed her company. Had she seen the interview? Did she agree with what
the VC said?

“He’s full of shit,” said my friend. “That guy is a manipulative psychopath. Before we even talked about the situation, he’d gone around me to everyone on my management team and planted seeds of doubt with them. He told different things to each team member, lied about our situation, and attributed things to me that hadn’t happened at all.”

“So, he wasn’t transparent with you?”

“Are you kidding me? I have no idea why anyone takes this guy seriously.”

“Did you when you first met him?”

“Well, yes, of course. He was charismatic, had a lot of capital, talked a good game, and had a lot of people who said great things about him.”

“What do you think happened?”

“I think he’s a manipulative, misogynistic, ego-challenged person who is deeply deceitful. Well, maybe he’s not misogynistic, but all the people who liked him were men, and I’ve subsequently met a few other female founders who had similar experiences to mine.”

The VC was neither transparent nor authentic. As is often the case, his reputation eventually caught up with him.