What is the saltiest thing you have a heard a startup founder say to you?

I'm hearing some horror stories of pressure and unreasonable expectations coming from VC's even at the seed stage. Pre and post funding. Do you folks have stories to share about this. Especially w.r.t. interaction with associates with zero business experience giving Gyan !.

I've heard lots of conflicting good and bad viewpoints on ISB on Grapevine and otherwise. I want to explore these things more and build a balanced perspective. Good things I've heard:- 1. Average comp is decently high as most of the batch has a decent amount of experience. 2. Professors, their way of teaching and the actual course content is one of the best in India. 3. The network is really strong, easily accessible via many channels and helps alumni land jobs frequently. Bad things I've heard:- 1. Placement comp numbers are heavily inflated. 2. Resume shortlisting in placements is hard because everyone exaggerates a lot and there's no resume vetting. 3. Many people go unplaced. How much of this (good or bad) is true? Any other good or bad points?

Was asking for some advice on fundraising. Got to know if you are building something with no revenue, literally impossible to raise. He explained how hard it is even for the current founders and expecting 100s of startups to fail next year with talent going cheap due to all the layoffs. Very hard to think how to monetise B2C if people don’t even link their credit or debit cards with Apple Pay and Android for in-app purchases. Also for B2B Saas, it’s better to build for US from India than building for India. Just “profit” over growth now. Nothing else matters 💭

Looking to find startups that may not have even started operations. Theses that you guys find interesting. People you know who are building. Would be helpful to know 🙏🏻

Recently I was talking to a girl who was working a startup in BLR. She left the startup with some horrendous experiences. This startup was working from a startup hostel in BLR. Things she told me shook me. She was dating the founder. So this founder who claims to be on his 2nd startup dates his own employees and then blackmails them. The average age of his employees is 24. All these girls that he dates are not above 23/24 Apparently this guy has 2 court cases against him. One for fraud and one for a rape case. Both of them are not easily found online. He uses VC money to keep in under the hood. The fraud case is about his first startup which was a stolen idea apparently. This guy’s whole life is fake. He claims to be an IIT Madras dropout, but he's from some local college. There are rumours that one of the girls he dated tried to kill herself because he allegedly filmed them. He also does not pay salaries for months to his employees but compensates by giving them expensive gifts. He claims his parents are IAS officers but we checked and they are not. His last startup was around around AUTH and current one is around Fintech Girls and boys stay away from working with such shady startups.

The startup is Accel and Elevation backed. The company raised seed funding because the founder and team is from IIT- Kharagpur, and Accel + Elevation have people from IIT-Kharagpur working in their team. The founder has no prior work experience, no manners on how to speak with anyone (office boy, or women employees) keeps firing people who don’t agree with him, insists on being in the office for 12 hours because he pays us. Hiring criteria is - 1. Single people, so no distraction. He asks are you single or in a relationship (in the interview) 2. No married people 3. Hire women only if they can stay in office till 5 AM (US based startup) 4. Everyone has to be in office for 12 hours compulsory for all 6 days of week He boasts on how the VCs will save his ass even if the product fails, has said that worst case scenario I will make money because I know company will be acquired. He hires domain experts, makes them create playbook and train juniors to do the work, and then fires them saying "We have to stay lean, and this is a bad market". He did this with 3 departments already. How are the VCs not asking him basic due diligence questions? He is now raising 8 million follow up round.

Second meeting with the guy, thought his outlook might improve because we had better numbers than the first meeting (few months ago). Didn't even remember the first conversation, or our business, didn't do any research on our startup or industry before the meeting. Kept forcing opinions on me instead of listening, same as the first meeting. Extremely rude and a waste of time. He said many things no founder should say, that too for another founder. (Pitching is difficult as is, rejection is common and it's very easy to get demotivated) When I said I'll share my experience with other founders and startups so they don't engage with that platform, got a reply saying they'll send me a defamation notice if I do, and will also tell other investors in the community that we are doing this startup as a "hobby" and no investor will come onboard. It's amazing to see the kind of arrogance some people have, especially in the investor and VC network. Would have loved to name and shame him but I have better things to do than to get into petty court cases with assholes. Fellow founders, please be very careful and choosy with who you talk to about your startup's fundraise. Indian VC ecosystem is mostly a circlejerk and a shitshow. You're better off raising from friends and family and even individual angel investors than trying to bargain with devils in disguise. I will most likely stop pitching for investment altogether and focus on growing my profitability than waste time convincing idiots who'd rather throw money on pitch decks without an MVP and startups without PMF, revenue or profitability. /endrant