Has it happened with any one that the Fund has taken out the amount from your company in form of loan and now struggling now to show it in their books ?

Welcome to Indian Startups's Private Community

Can VCs take out invested amount in form of loan ?

Founder

Can VCs take out invested amount in form of loan ?- Grapevine

Cofounders are pushed by VCs so their bet becomes higher odds because often one founder quits, burns out, is done, so they want a backup founder

Ask any VC and they'll admit this to you in private

Only benefits VCs not you

For you: a cofounder means your income $$$ or exit $$$ halves

But your odds of drama and trouble doubles

Half the money, double the trouble!

See Facebook drama with early cofounders for examples and countless other stories

VCs will never admit this publicly!

The Truth About VC Pushing for Co-founders: More Risk, Less Reward

Program Manager

Welcome to Office Gossip's Private Community

Go ahead, ask if we pushed founders to commit fraud.

AMA: Worked at tier 2 VC - got in post a few years of workex and a tier 2 Indian uni

What stops you from *stealing* an idea that you found mind-blowing from a pitch of a startup trying to get a seed funding?

Software Engineer

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?

Asking this on behalf of many founders like myself, wanted to collate across multiple inputs: what is it that VCs really want to hear/see from a startup? 

Would love to get inputs from VCs and other founders alike - basis your experience on what has worked what hasn't worked.

The usual suspects: obviously the founder credentials, TAM, insights, metrics. But, what else? 
Look forward to informed answers.

What do VCs really look for in startups? How do they evaluate?

Byju’s manages to raise more capital… yet again 👀

Corporate Strategist

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

Any bad VC stories?

Growth Manager

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

Project Manager

After Unicorns now it's VCs 😁

Any idea whether this happened in India as well for their new entity ?

https://www.forbes.com/sites/kenrickcai/2023/07/24/sequoia-talent-team-layoffs-firm-restructuring/?sh=5d3a78d925f4

Sequoia VC  Layoffs

Was any startup/investor( in India )impacted due to SVB insolvency?

SVB aftermaths

With the host of startups closing down, was curious to know what does founder net worth usually result in and how do they generally make money for them along the way. Few questions-

1. Do founder sell percentage of own shares in Series A and B raises? I would assume there would be some checks on this but want to know what's the practical reality of this and if this happens what's the amount a founder can make through this 


2. If the startup is clear it has to shut down, what typically happens? Acquisitions? Insolvency?


3. Assume a Series B  level startup with valuation around 150 cr with say 10 Cr annual revenue and 40 cr losses and 30% founder stake and it's clear it has to shut down. In the absence of any acquisition, what money comes to the founder

Founder wealth gains in failed startups

well placed to answer this.
We recently shut down.
we had raised about 4.8 mn USD and were operational for 3 years.
When we decided to shut down we had about 500k in the bank.
The primary reason was so that we could clear all our dues and liabilities well.
We paid 2.5-3 months of severance, laptops to our team.
Then we had to clear a lot of statutory payments, which were usually taken care of from the monthly cash flows.
Then we hired a high charging consulting firm to ensure proper due diligence of closure process so that there are no surprises later, whether it was around taxation, vendor payments or any contracts.
Then we hired a law firm for the closure process.
After all this, the company was left with about 150k USD on the books.
This money was paid out to us two founders as severance payout.
In the 3 years of operations the founders in general averaged at less than 25% of their market salary, which meant depletion of personal resources completely.
The severance amount received by each of us was as good as 60-80% of our market salary.
Net net, financially, less money earned from salary + severance than would have earned in 3 years of my market salary job.
Hope this helps :)

Management Consulting

willl try my best to be honest, ask me anything

AMA - I work at a VC fund

Analyst

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.

Product Manager

1. hiring very expensive law firms with kick back. 
2. Buying the office space and then hiking the rent to the office around 5x and made money.
3. Fake invoices
4. hiring friends companies for consulting
5. setting up shell companies for hiring
6. Buying Forbes 30 under 30  slots with VC money


Make this list more exhaustive. 

I want to say to these founders : bhai kisko chutiya bana rahe ho... And after all this, they have galls to become Gyan chodeswar on LinkedIn, podcasts etc.

List of different ways through which founder has routed VC money for personal gains

Welcome to Personal Finance's Private Community

https://m.economictimes.com/tech/startups/p2p-lenders-to-stop-liquid-funds-as-rbi-peers-into-business/articleshow/108686922.cms


https://twitter.com/ravihanda/status/1771021456287088858

P2P Lending firms self regulating to stop instant withdrawals from 1-Apr

Byju's has raised nearly 6 billion in total and is now valued at 6 billion $. How does this work? 

I mean won't this mean all equities of byju's will now be with VCs?

Byju's has raised nearly 6 billion in total and is now valued at 6 billion $. How does this work?

I have evaluated a lot of startups as part of my work. My approach has changed from being optimistic to being suspicious of a lot of founders, even before the process starts. 

The sheer number of founders that I come across that try to game metrics/play around with data to make the startup look good. 

Most commonly:
1) Completely changing the definition of margins, repeat rates, etc. and never clarifying that they are using different definition. 
2) Often giving rebates/discounts to key stakeholders but finding ways to hide it from their P&L so that it’s not visible. THIS IS SO COMMON - lot’s of them start showing revenues, and then you will see another cost item rising at the same pace, and lot’s of times it will just be money moving around
3) Sometimes completely giving the wrong picture of how their product works on ground. You then speak with their customers, and they describe something completely else.

Things like these are eating up the ecosystem. These founders also end up fooling some VCs, and then capital get’s kept away from actually good founders who have good intentions.

There was a recent major investment in the commerce space, and that is another one such example of a startup doing this. Needs to stop.

RANT: Founders who fake metrics

Product Owner

VCs have been caught with their pants down in the number fudging scandals and now trying to wash their hands off from it. Impossible to execute without VC blessings. Investigation should be done and strict action taken on rogue VCs.

Finance Consultant

Why do some startups lay off people even when they know that they'll be raising money soon via new funding?

Case in point: Dunzo

Are these employees given severance? Or is it just that Hi, Hello, Today is your last day, thank you, bye that you see most startups do?

What are your thoughts on this?

Funding and layoffs

VCs pulling out of funding round after signing TS is getting common, it's best to call them out

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