Let's look at what a VC is trying to accomplish here.
- They don't want to invest for reason {X}. Could be as trivial as someone not liking the founder or they could genuinely think they don't know whether the company will do well.
- They don't want to tell the founders what they really think. Mostly because they want to hold open the option in case they are proven wrong as often happens. As much as founders say they like honest replies, I've seen so many founders say "VC X said he doesn't want to invest in us because he disagrees with us on {reason}- I'm going to prove that moron so wrong".
- They want to help out the founder with a couple of intros so that the founder doesn't feel like he got nothing from them in return.
The boilerplate/corporate B.S language? Terrible and everyone could easily do better. But there's no easy to tell someone you don't believe in something they're putting their heart and soul into.
YC has the nicest rejection mails of all of VC-land and I've still seen YC-rejects get really angry and make it their life's work to prove pg wrong.
- They don't want to invest for reason {X}. Could be as trivial as someone not liking the founder or they could genuinely think they don't know whether the company will do well.
- They don't want to tell the founders what they really think. Mostly because they want to hold open the option in case they are proven wrong as often happens. As much as founders say they like honest replies, I've seen so many founders say "VC X said he doesn't want to invest in us because he disagrees with us on {reason}- I'm going to prove that moron so wrong".
- They want to help out the founder with a couple of intros so that the founder doesn't feel like he got nothing from them in return.
The boilerplate/corporate B.S language? Terrible and everyone could easily do better. But there's no easy to tell someone you don't believe in something they're putting their heart and soul into.
YC has the nicest rejection mails of all of VC-land and I've still seen YC-rejects get really angry and make it their life's work to prove pg wrong.