Hi. I'm a VC named Maria Palma. This is my first Hacker News post so sorry if I mess it up. :) I've worked as a VC in the US and Europe and am currently in SF. I wrote this as a play on the Attention is All You Need paper for fun last fall and decided to post this. Feedback welcome and encouraged in the comments.

Even most VCs who claim to be value additive end up being closer to value neutral in the grand scheme of things

Great paper Maria! Core challenge is uneven-ness of networks; ie if you're well networked, you know from whisper networks which VCs are value destructive. If you're, you don't which leads to unequal outcomes. How could we fix for this?

This is so true - "even basic professionalism pays off. Just showing up on time, having read the deck/thought about the business, asking good questions" Yes, fundraising can be stressful and time consuming. But in general showing up ill prepared is boring for everyone. No conversation that starts from 0 and is 20-30 minutes can be truly interesting to either party, because it's just an exercise in each side trying to put each other in a variety of 'boxes' - 'We're the Harvey AI of RE' 'We're the only REAL VC built by founders, for founders'. I haven't built a successful business by boring people to tears with ill-founded aphorisms, so it's nice not to have those 'hows the weather' chats with VCs.