Are Venture Capitalists deforming capitalism?
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Earlier this week, The New Yorker wrote a scathing piece on the VC industry with the above title (link in comments), looking at VCs through the WeWork debacle. If you were a cynic, you could write it off as cherry-picked writing in the “tech Vs media” battle that’s plaguing the Valley.

But it does highlight some issues with VC pretty well. Yet it isn’t saying anything new. The problems in VC are quite apparent — concentration of big capital with fewer funds, a power shift towards maverick founders, VCs becoming less confrontational to be seen as founder friendly, lack of principled & authoritative boards, a growth-only gospel, and an undying hope that continuous scale will trump everything else.

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Dealing With Draconian Investors
Dealing With Draconian Investors
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In the past year at Globevestor, I have closely witnessed a few instances of startup fundraises where key investors behaved un-admirably, by failing to honor their commitment or trying to re-negotiate previously agreed terms of investment at the last minute.

Mostly this happened at the round closure stage, i.e. post term sheet/ due diligence & during paper-work/ money transfer, despite the investors being well aware of the limited runway & options available to the startup. At worst, they possibly happened specifically because of this knowledge!

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