How a pragmatic shaggy dog story by means of CBInsights Skewering VC culture Fooled Silicon Valley

Anand Sanwal, the CEO of CB Insights—a analysis agency that tracks funding in startups—had an idea for an April Fools’ Day comic story that made fun of Silicon Valley’s unicorns and the venture capitalists who fund them.

at the finish of the day on April 1, the corporate introduced on its social media feeds that it had launched a brand new $forty million fund called “ChubbyBrain Ventures” and that it used to be searching for a “numerous set of candidates from Harvard, Stanford, or Wharton” (hah!).

If that dig at tech’s smartly-documented range drawback proved to be too subtle, the publish also included a GIF of a unicorn and a call out for “chubby” startups that are somewhere between “the lean and fats startup” (whatever that means).

inside 48 hours, the corporate says it was once flooded with resumes from mission partners, congratulatory notes, co-investment opportunities, and even a number of information articles that have therefore been eliminated. CB Insights knowledgeable any journalists who reached out to them prior to publishing that it was once an April Fools’ joke.

“i suspect that some people handiest skimmed the headline and not the submit, which would possibly provide an explanation for the congratulatory notes,” says Sanwal. “but i might think that people who reached out for employment opportunities gave it a read.”

i discussed to Sanwal that I hear some distance crazier stuff delivered in a completely un-ironic method on the common. One incident that comes to mind is from two years ago, when a outstanding project capitalist knowledgeable me that he ceaselessly calls his wife for an opinion when he will get a pitch deck from an e-commerce startup—and is therefore “friendly to female founders.” Or, there may be the constant movement of meaningless jargon in news articles and press releases (what’s a SaaS endeavor health platform, anyway)?

Sanwal failed to got down to show any better point, however he used to be shocked—and perhaps even a bit of freaked out—by using the certain responses to a put up, by which he intentionally depicted himself as a total douche bag. “individuals most likely fell for it as a result of now we have all heard this type of crazy, absurd factor sooner than.”

neatly, Silicon Valley, i guess the comic story is on us.