Ask HN: Investor went dark after getting startup financial information
36 by ohwhataweb | 22 comments on Hacker News.
Our 11 person startup had an expression of interest from quite a reputable VC and we had few months of communication regarding growth, revenues etc. Finally the VC agreed to invest he wanted to do due-diligence by going through the customer's list rather than checking our business bank accounts. I was a bit hesitant but wanted the funding to go through, to take my mind off it and focus on the startup. I sent the list of customers, their contact details and the revenues from each of them and the investor just vanished after that. I know PG said that in silicon valley a verbal commitment is as good as a deal. This VC gave us verbal and email commitment and then vanished without the common courtesy of explaining why. There has been no response to my multiple emails or phone calls. The VC is very well known and not a flyby shop. The main issue is that the investor already has a startup in his cohort that is in the same space as us. Few months later my customers started receiving emails from this other startup. I have no idea how to ask this VC , who has infinitely more money and power than our startup, to destroy all of our data and not use it in any way whatsoever. I don't want the funding and I don't want to burn the bridges but I want to protect our customer data.
Our 11 person startup had an expression of interest from quite a reputable VC and we had few months of communication regarding growth, revenues etc. Finally the VC agreed to invest he wanted to do due-diligence by going through the customer's list rather than checking our business bank accounts. I was a bit hesitant but wanted the funding to go through, to take my mind off it and focus on the startup. I sent the list of customers, their contact details and the revenues from each of them and the investor just vanished after that. I know PG said that in silicon valley a verbal commitment is as good as a deal. This VC gave us verbal and email commitment and then vanished without the common courtesy of explaining why. There has been no response to my multiple emails or phone calls. The VC is very well known and not a flyby shop. The main issue is that the investor already has a startup in his cohort that is in the same space as us. Few months later my customers started receiving emails from this other startup. I have no idea how to ask this VC , who has infinitely more money and power than our startup, to destroy all of our data and not use it in any way whatsoever. I don't want the funding and I don't want to burn the bridges but I want to protect our customer data.
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