Tell us your worst experience with venture capitalists
Good to see a new Investors group on IH
Have you ever experienced any unexpected experience with VCs, investors, accelerators?
Why does it happen?
And what did you learn?
I spent my last 3 years at venture builder, VC and now at a boutique startup investment firm. We’re always looking for ways to improve our relationship with founders.
Keen to hear your thoughts.
Trending on Indie Hackers
From my experience, the main problem is the long lead time from the VC saying "we're in" to then going through DD. Then, after several months (but what feels like a lifetime), pulling out for very random reasons. I'd love to see more openness and transparency of process throughout.
Totally understand and agree with your feeling. Take a step back, you also wanna partner with the right VC in order to take your company further. Hence it might be a right decision for both side.
To speed up the process, proactive reach out and regular update would be important. Visible.vc is a good platform to learn about this ;)
My worst experience was with the founder of a VC who had given us a verbal confirmation for a large pre-seed check which we waited for almost 2 months for. We had some insider knowledge that they had done some unethical practices working with some of the startups, but thought little of it.
The founder asked me to redesign their landing page - I told them I could complete it within a week, and he agreed to pay me $30/hour for a total of 40 hours the entire week.
My advisor warned me and told me to stop working on it halfway through to ask him for a down payment of 50% of the charge (I'm guessing he had found out some new info but wouldn't tell me what). Once I did this he immediately stopped being as responsive as he used to be (he had been texting me on an hourly basis and always responded to me within seconds).
Lots of details I could divulge, but for the sake of being concise I'll cut to the conclusion: he told me my work was work nothing more than $60 for the entire thing and wouldn't budge - when I tried corresponding with him more, he berated me and accused me of inflating my hours.
I cried for the first time during my entrepreneurial endeavors because I felt really stupid and worn out, but this experience only made me stronger and I feel like I can conquer even more now.
Also my founding team decided he was a piece of shit and cut ties completely with them even though we had been waiting for funding for months.
This comment was deleted 3 years ago.
This comment was deleted 4 years ago.
We started this post a month ago and I'm excited to share a new resource. Hopefully this is something useful to help you walkthrough the startup investment journey @mslaney @rasreee @hackerland @Breffni -> VenturesList
Watching VCs take over a company, string along the in house workforce while they crunch through a busy period, then get rid of them and outsource the roles to India.
This sounds like what PE should do. I’m curious. .. do you know their intention behind?
And how’d you suggest the IH community to avoid this situation? @Breffni thanks for sharing
The intention is to maximize returns and extract money.
I suppose the main thing is don't lose control of your own company.
This comment was deleted 4 years ago.
That’s really not professional. Thanks for being transparent!
What’s your recommendation when any IH members come across similar scenario? @hackerland