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Beware of charming associates who solicit you out of the blue, cajole you to cough up good market info and then proceed to be an entirely waste of time. AVOID LIKE THE PLAGUE. LSVP are known foot-draggers and in this entrepreneur's view will forever be stuck in the second tier of VCs.

Met with a partner that was completely unrelated to our field, from the first moment he was negative for each and every word we said (including the first slide with the title...), we asked us to rush our pitch after the first slide...and then attacked our assumptions (that have been validated by top players in the market) as we were talking nonsense, although it was clear he has no clue about our market at all.....later on he called to turn us down....

Pitched early stage deal to Ajit Deora. He was attacking every sentence but couldn't pin us down for the simple reason that we had answers to all his concerns. Interesting experience but not very helpful.

LSVP and Jeremy are probably the most active investors in the social gaming space. He took our meeting on a reference, was very courteous and provided us with helpful feedback.

Initial pitch went well. Andrew read our business plan, asked good questions for an industry that LVP is not currently invested in.

After working with Ravi at two different companies, I can attest that he really cares for the companies he's involved with, and offers useful advice.

Do other VCs hear your ideas too, even when they're at advanced stage of due diligence with your competitor" :)

Talked to a partner in India about our company. He was very attentive & seemed to know all about the space, which is rare. Little did I know that he was just gathering all the competitive info from me, while closing a round with our competitor. The announcement came 10 days later that they funded our competition. He could have simply told us "No Meeting". But then that would be too ethical" :)

Background: I worked with Peter Nieh of Lightspeed Venture Partners to create MyBuys from the assets of another portfolio company in a very productive and creative manner in 2006.

Deal structure: Peter and his partners were very receptive to the idea of creating a new company with a new capital structure that would be attractive to management. In order for the new capital structure to come together, Lightspeed recapitalized their previous investment entirely and invested in our new venture with a new mindset (a difficult thing for many VCs to do as they often get caught in the emotion of the old deal's issues), new preferences, and a belief in the new team.

Future round assistance: Peter was very supportive in preparing me for our B round funding process. He helped tailor the message of the investor presentation to be well tuned for the VC audiences. He also assisted with many introductions to other VCs as well as providing strong support when discussing our team and prospects.

Funding result: We were able to receive many term sheets that were all significantly above our last round post-money. Lightspeed invested in the B round requiring only one presentation to update the partners on our progress since the previous round (in addition to Peter's reporting on us behind the scenes) and Lightspeed has also reserved for future rounds.

Board Member: As a board member, Peter lets me operate the company - and I appreciate that. He cares about aligning goals, the market, and customer traction. He also cares about the quality and the recruitment of the management team and will actively engage in recruiting team members, if asked. If I were an investor, these would be the things that I would also care about also.

Other Lightspeed assistance:
I have received multiple sales leads (Jeremy Liew's internet background and connections have been very helpful), several high quality employee candidates, and participated in several Lightspeed events as part of their ability to proactively assist their portfolio companies.

Overall: Lightspeed is a very professional and smart group of partners and I would highly recommend them to other CEOs. Please feel free to contact me direclty at rcell@mybuys.com with any questions.

Had Peter on my board, and he was worse than useless: he actually made things worse through ineptitude, stupidity, and sheepishness.

If a VC takes an active role in your company, he/she can either be a help or a hinderance. You may havbe taken $$ from a VC Fund, but you end up having to deal - over and over again - with one Partner.

It would be greater if the Partner had extensive realworld experience. It would be even better if the Partner had a sense of humility, grace, decency and humor.

Peter has none of these.

So, take $$ from Lightspeed. Just don't take it from Peter

We really value Jeremy's understanding of our space. He is someone who actively tries things out for himself and translates the best of Web 2.0 into suggestions for our own business.

For example, we were able to acquire a highly successful Facebook application before it even got listed in the Facebook directory. This was directly due to Jeremy having installed the app through his friend network and then recommending it to us. It is great when your VC gives you an inside scoop on acquiring 5M users.

Nice offices.

Nabeel writes - "But showing up twenty minutes late and then joking to each other about how they always make entrepreneurs wait should be corrected behavior. We've all got busy schedules."

Very much enjoyed the meeting. Ravi was peppering with questions and Jeremy is very strong, so that was all good.

But Jeremy & Ravi showed up at least twenty minutes late. They apologized but later were commenting to each other about how they are always late. That should be corrected behavior, we've all got busy schedules.

I have worked with Lightspeed guys for 10+ years, in particular Peter Nieh and Ravi Mhatre. Good, hardworking guys and a good fund that understand enterprise software and how to nurture companies. They were beyond patient with some deals that went shitty after the dotcom bust.

On some of the comments here, note that if you do not know how to pitch to VCs they are not going to be so pleasant, so get a short elevator pitch down that communicates your value prop, don't expect meetings to start on time, and don't have more than 15 slides.

Jeremy is a good guy: he is always generous with his time, provides valuable feedback and he has a ton of real world operational experience- unlike some others you meet around the Valley.

Setting up a meeting with Ajit was a good experience since he took pains to have his staff co-ordinate the meeting (especially since I was flying in from Asia for a limited time).

When we pitched to Ravi, he was very engaged and efficiently came up to speed with our technology. Our technology and market is not obvious, but by the second meeting I clearly feel he understands our space by way of his follow-on intense and engaging questions. I know people have different opinions of people, but I have to honestly say that working with Ravi has been a very positive experience for me and one of the best I have had.

Ajit Deora at Lightspeed is a genuinely nice person. He will go out of his way to help entrepreneurs as he has built companies and understands what you are going through. He is extremely sharp and gives great feedback. I highly recommend him and if you are doing something releated to wireless or web servies, do contact him.

More heat than light

Some partners are difficult to work with, and require a lot of management attention for upward management of the board. Be ready to spend many cycles with them