A VC at the 2022 Capital Factory demo day told me our pitch was "a feature, not a company"
He said it in front of 200 people and I was pissed for a month, but he was right, so we killed the product and rebuilt around the one thing people actually paid for. Anyone else in Austin get torched by blunt feedback and later admit the person was right?
Wow, hold on, why are we all clapping for the guy who humiliated you in front of 200 people? That was not "blunt feedback," that was a jerk move dressed up as honesty, and the fact that he turned out to be right does not make it okay. You can be right and still be a rude person at the same time, those two things are not connected at all. If his point was so smart, he could have said it to you in private after the demo, but he wanted the room to see how clever he was, and that is about his ego, not your product. So many bad calls in startups get made with the same story, someone gets torn down in public, then everyone says "well they were right," like that excuses it. The lesson you learned was real, but he still owes you an apology, and honestly I would not want that guy's money even if he was right about the whole thing.