I thought about that, too. In
the end, I came up with another
description of the investors:

Well, I can't explain that one;
here we don't want NSFW material!

So, I'll give a SFW version;
I'll
concentrate on information
technology since biomedical
is at least a little different:

(1) The investors are not very
technical people. Often we're
talking people with backgrounds
in business development,
marketing, routine software,
former CEOs of startups that
were largely non-technical, etc.

In contrast, the people in
high end research university
STEM field research know
how to evaluate technical work,
e.g., as reviewers and editors
of good peer-reviewed journals.
And if some paper is outside
the field of some prof,
then he will still know how
to get the work reviewed by
others, e.g., as the editor in
chief of a journal gets the
editors and reviewers to do the
work.

Then, just think a little about
what is involved in such peer-review and, then, begin
to see how hopeless it would
be for the usual investors to
do such work. For the VCs,
such technical review work
is hopeless, and they don't do it.

Or for your description
that they
hear hype, that's
not really
the problem; instead, hype or
not, "revolutionary"
or not, they just ignore
anything like research.

Or look at the bios of the VCs:
Could hold a convention in
an airplane wash room for
all of them able to do or
even able to
direct peer-review of
STEM field
research.

(2) Evaluating research is
something the VCs just
won't do. Likely if one of
their limited partners (LPs) caught one of their VCs using
an evaluation of some
research, then the LP would make
sure that VC never got another
dime, at least not from that
LP.

(3) Sometimes VCs make money,
and sometimes they don't.
On average the don't make
very much.
In any case, they don't
try to make money with the
results of research.

(4) Mostly VCs don't evaluate
the technical work. Instead,
for early stage investing,
their criteria are fairly
simple: (A) Look for
traction significantly high
and growing rapidly. (B) Be
sure the work is for a
really large market. (C) Usually be sure the CEO
and company HQ will be a
short drive from the VC's
offices. (D) Look for anything
that is really wacko that
would be a disqualification.

If (A)-(D) look good, then
contact the CEO and argue that
a check of equity funding would
help their growth rate enough
to more than pay for the stock
dilution.

Have a term sheet that for the
CEO is just onerous and puts
the VCs in solid control, e.g.,
able to replace the CEO with
someone loyal to the VC.

For seed funding, the VCs
look at the product, although
not at any technical internals,
and try to estimate how the
target users/customers would
like the product.

For later stage funding, the
VCs look mostly just at what
an accountant does.

And for any VC funding, they
look at what they know about
the market: Commonly VCs
claim to have "deep domain
knowledge"; in terms of
anything technical, that is
a wild belly laugh; could break
a bone slapping a thigh over
that one. But they do have
at least a cursory, from 10,000
feet up, view of the markets.
So, they have heard of viral,
social, local, mobile, sharing,
photo apps, own both an iPhone
and an Android, have used
Google, Facebook, PInterest,
SnapChat, InstaGram, and Uber, have heard about tablets,
laptops, Windows,
Apple, Linux, have seen articles
on Apple's watch, have
gotten a lot of pitch decks,
attended a lot of pitches,
and have listened for a few minutes each to a few.

For more, they know most of the other VCs on, say, Sand Hill Road, and attend morning
what's hot pick-up seminars
in coffee shops. For
exits they know about
acquihires, pitchforking,
M&A, and maybe even IPOs.

While in some sense the VCs
understand that the need
to find companies that
are new and exceptional,
they look for patterns they
have seen from the past, patterns
that must reject most
new and exceptional companies.

Really, they dream of a
CEO of a company they funded
calling them and telling them
about the next SnapChat.

Sometimes they make money,
and sometimes they don't, but
that's what they do.

The VCs commonly say that
their funding is not for
everyone, and that is very
true. While what the VCs
do sometimes makes money,
in no way are the VCs a
broad source of innovation
funding.

For revolutionary technology,
the VCs couldn't care less.
Actually, they would prefer
that anything technical not
be important -- the don't want
to get involved in anything
technical.