Is it the same though? If your start-up gets money from Kleiner Perkins, do you really pay attention to everyone who gave money to Kleiner Perkins to start the original fund? I had in mind that HN would be more of being a provider of capital than an active investor. YC would be "investor."
Harvard University invests quite a bit of money in equity vehicles so for illustrative purposes I'm going to pretend they are a LP in KP.
Here's a conversation which will never happen:
"Hey, YC company! This is Bob at Endowment Management at Harvard. I've decided to forget my 20 year career in finance while simultaneously hopping straight over our trusted partners at KP and ask you directly about our investment. As you'll recall, we dropped a whole Benjamin on that software whatsamahoozit of yours, and we want to know you're working hard on protecting our investment. It shouldn't have cookies, or crackers, or whatever the trace your Facebooks on the Googles thing the WSJ was talking about this morning. You should probably give me your cell phone number so I can call at odd hours with spurious requests. By the way I hear Steve at Stanford says you're a dick for not answering your phone -- not cool! Steve paid 20 perfectly good dollars for your stock, you OWE it to him to take his questions."
Which means that the investment professionals aren't loose canons and they've been around the block and understand what their role is. Publicly at least they don't operate like that.
