For the manic guy, sorry 'bout him. My experience with people who are driven, determined, and brilliant but also unstable psychologically is that the instability is a serious flaw, gives instances of irrationality, and, net, can, from some of the instances, be fatal to whatever effort is being attempted and sometimes also to the person making the attempt.

I don't believe that the article is much about manic entrepreneurs and had another take: The article was from an NYT newsie trying to write something shocking to grab people by the gut to get eyeballs for ad revenue. So, the article is NOT about communicating realistic information about manic entrepreneurs but JUST about getting eyeballs for ads. Or, as in the 1951 movie The Thing from Another World where the newsie character Ned 'Scotty' Scott said about writing a news story: "If it's not good, I'll MAKE it good".

To get some entrepreneurship credibility to help in his eyeball grabbing effort, the NYT newsie went to

Mr. Paul Maeder

General Partner

Highland Capital Partners

There Maeder played along: Maeder seems to have wanted to have his name in the paper to help him get deal flow. And in particular he wanted to suggest that he was open to funding even "crazy" efforts. So, Maeder gave the statement:

“You need to suspend disbelief to start a company, because so many people will tell you that what you’re doing can’t be done, and if it could be done, someone would have done it already,” says Paul Maeder, a general partner at Highland Capital. “There are six billion human beings on this planet, we’ve been around for hundreds of thousands of years, we’re a couple hundred years into the industrial revolution — and nobody has done what you want to do? It’s kind of crazy.”

I flatly do NOT take this statement at face value at all. Instead, the statement is (1) to give the NYT newsie a grabber "crazy" (to go along with the manic part of the article) and (2) again, to suggest to entrepreneurs that all of entrepreneurship is "crazy" and, thus, he, Maeder, is willing to fund even "crazy" ideas from "crazy" people.

On "crazy" ideas:

“There are six billion human beings on this planet, we’ve been around for hundreds of thousands of years, we’re a couple hundred years into the industrial revolution — and nobody has done what you want to do? It’s kind of crazy.”

This statement is DUMB: Maeder is in effect claiming that no one can do original research and discover results that are, and clearly seen to be, new, correct, and powerful for real, practical problems. Nonsense -- totally misinformed and/or uninformed, just plain wrong, dangerous, brain-dead, head in the sand, disconnected NONSENSE. The NSF, NIH, and DoD provide contradictions by the hundreds each year and have for decades.

Any entrepreneur who understands how to find new, correct, powerful, valuable ideas at anywhere near the level of the work of the NSF, NIH, or DoD will have to conclude that Maeder will regard the work as just "crazy" and stay away from Maeder.

Next, anyone familiar with venture capital and the plans approved by the limited partners will know that nearly all venture partners, and likely also Maeder, make Series A venture funding decisions heavily on objectively observable numerical measures of traction and also on the founders and their track records and personalities where being "crazy" is NOT an advantage. That an idea is "crazy" does NOT improve the chances of funding; that there is good traction may permit ignoring that an idea is "crazy". That is, good traction, a "crazy" idea, and a manic founder are not nearly as good as just good traction.

More generally, part of the venture capital sales technique to attract deal flow is to toss out lots of vague cliches about the purpose and criteria of the venture firm. Instead, the purpose is to make money for the limiteds within the 10 year or so life of the fund, and the criteria are nearly all just traction and/or earnings, rapidly growing. There is little role for "crazy".

NYT newsies are at it again, as the NYT finances spiral down from the long river of various kinds of their brain-dead nonsense.