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Growth Manager

Any experience of sleeping with the wrong VC in your company's investors? How did they harm you or affect you? Need names pls

Welcome to Indian Startups's Private Community

Any bad VC stories?

Any bad VC stories?- Grapevine

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 !.

Founders on here....what's the worst VC experience that you've had ?

Founder

Image source: https://twitter.com/f6ary/status/1712505898688528719 

I used to work with one and always thought he was like this wanted to know if anyone had any experiences like below with them here?

Anyone had any experiences like this with VCs in india?

Software Engineer

Welcome to News Discussion's Private Community

Which Indian VC investor is a no-go and why? 
Share in person’s name - fund - reason(s) format if possible

Which VCs to avoid

Recently met a few VCs. Why are so many of them so stuck up and have entitlement issues

Investment Associate

If you have been through the process of raising funding from VCs, whats been your best and worst experiences?

Experience with VCs

I'll start - One of the older VC firms with an office in Indiranagar (also probably planning to shut their scout vehicle fund after a few employee exits) reels of toxicity at the helm. GP who comes from a rich family has the habit of arm twisting employees and putting them down even on the smallest of the mistakes. What's your toxic VC story?

Let's discuss toxic VCs

Founder’s Office

Know a cousin who is a founder. Tells me with experience that VCs in India only operate in FOMO. Unless you tell them another VC is looking to invest in you, they will NEVER invest in you. 

They need fomo to operate 

Only exception is ex CXO founders (high profile), where they know they'll get funded so it's fastest fingers first!!

People should call this out more. What are examples around you where VCs have done something bad to a startup?

Growth And Strategy

Is this behaviour by VCs very common in Indian startup ecosystem? Have heard of more such stories from founder friends

Project Manager

Do you find high quality, with strong operator experience? I'm a bits21 grad looking to start up and wanted to get a lay of the land. Either funds or VC partner names!

Which VC in India

Product Owner

How does this app plan to monetize?

[Thread] Why does every founder I know hate VCs to the core?

Product Manager

If any vc or investors is their pls tell me

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

Defamation notice threat: Pitching in India

Fuck the defamation notice. Don’t take shit from anyone, if someone crosses their line, reply to them then and there, so that you never think about that again. 
  
 VC and angel market is big in India now. No one has full control of the full ecosystem.  
 This is not Bollywood and there is not Salman khan and Karan Johar. 
  
 Here even fraudsters are getting second chance. Keep building.

Generalist

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.

Tinder Swindler of BLR

Interesting, the whole story is about unknown man with unknown startup. Thanks for such an insightful post.

Tiger, Elevation and Matrix backed fintech startup has started layoff.  CTO has left and they have started firing in business roles with the largest cuts in tech. 

- Bad product fitment and loses money on every account
- Core team has started leaving
- Even got an opportunity to see their office space available for rent
- Classic case of poor culture and no actual product
- Founders travel to USA/london on trips
- Horrible place to work as a girl

Got this from one of their devs.  


STAY Away!!

JODO - Silent layoffs Started!!!

Any Grapevine Op working as a VC currently? Need some help.

Any bad VC stories?

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