Founders, Beware. An AI Chatbot May Have Written That Pitch Rejection

Founders, remember that note in your inbox from a venture capitalist who’s “decided not to invest” but “would still like to stay in touch”? It might have been written by an artificial intelligence chatbot.

Venture capital investors are tripping over themselves to buy stakes in OpenAI, the company behind the ultra popular new AI tool ChatGPT, which can generate impressively human-sounding copy in seconds, or to invest in one of its many competitors. They’re also convinced the latest developments in AI will fundamentally change how deals get done.

“You can get rid of all the back and forth and spend more time with the founder,” said Andre Retterath, a partner at Earlybird Venture Capital in Germany. Retterath recently has asked ChatGPT to draft email templates for introductions to founders he wants to meet, as well as rejection notes to startups he’s not interested in backing.

For an industry that’s supposedly built on the power of relationships, this sounds like a pretty soulless development in VC dealmaking. But it may be inevitable, as investors multiply their reach-outs in the hope of finding a winner.