You may be ready to do whatever an investor wants if it means they will put money into your business, but don’t act too quickly. Business Insider considers the bad behavior of one investor, and why you should be careful.
In my email exchange with the entrepreneur, I asked two questions. The first was “is he going to be full time with the company†and the other was “do you want him as a third full time partner.†The answer was no and no. More specifically, the VC was positioning himself as “the founder that would help raise the money.â€
I dug a little deeper to find out who the person was in case it was just a random dude looking for gig flow. David Cohen, the CEO of TechStars, has written extensively about this in our book Do More Faster – for example, see the chapter Beware of Angel Investors Who Aren’t. I was shocked when I saw the name of the person and the firm he has been with (and is leaving) – it’s someone who has been in the VC business for a while and should know better.
Entrepreneurs – beware. This is the kind of behavior that gives investors a bad name. Unfortunately, my impression of this particular person is that he’s not a constructive early stage investor but rather someone who is trying to prey on naive entrepreneurs. Whenever the markets heat up, this kind of thing starts happening. Just be careful out there.
Photo by Andrew Magill