This probably happens to a bunch of founders. Luckily at betaworks, we have a great support team and so far, everyone has been exceptionally helpful.
In doing my homework when we were looking to partner with someone, I was steered away from a firm that was interested by a friend who had bad dealings with that particular VC. These things matter. You don’t want to put in this much hard work, risk and brainpower - only to have someone act like all of it was “trivial”.
If being a founder was so easy, everyone would be doing it. The truth is, just getting your company together, funded and a product out the door puts you in a class above those that might just scribble an idea but never act on it. When people pay for your product, you’re in the big leagues. When your product scales and it becomes a must-have, you’ve made it.
We’re in between having made it to the big leagues and trying to have “made it”. It took a whole lot of hustle and grind, determination, research, late nights, rewrites, re-analysis, rebranding and at least some measure of talent to get here.
Steve Blank (the author of this link), although I don’t know him personally, seems to be patient and likable. The kind of guy who has the far-sightedness to return the favor to his board member at a later date.
With the current group of folks that has our back, this situation is an impossibility, but some day things may get bigger, you never know if you’d add a few board seats, etc. If this were to happen on the board of my company or any of the boards I am on, that person would leave the room with a world record atomic wedgie, believe that.
“You’re just the founders”. That’s just insanity talking, as well as someone who is a horrible steward for his LPs’ capital. Just like the funding team looks at management teams, so should the fund’s investors look at the fund management.
As someone low on the totem pole to those higher up - please don’t enable more jackasses that do not value the conception and implementation of ideas. It makes the world a little worse each time that happens. You’re in a position to change a lot of things - and you’re smart enough to be looking to make gains on your capital. Spend the extra few hours getting to know what’s going to happen to it and make sure it doesn’t wind up in the hands of an idiot. Please.
In New York City right now, there is an exceptional revolution taking place that values founders and their ideas. For the first time that I have seen, monetization and product vision are important to both founders and management. It’s our jobs as founders to maximize this opportunity, the funding team’s job to find more teams and ideas with the drive and skill to make it happen - and of much understated importance - the LP’s job to sweep the chumps out of the game.
Let’s get this right.
