6 ms·

Founder Friendly

97 points by _gbc 9y ago

WisNorCan 9y ago
VCs used to oust founders and bring in experienced operators as soon as a company started scaling. Cisco is one of many high profile cases of founders getting kicked out [0]. With the success of Google and Facebook, VCs pattern matched and became enamored with the founder. The pendulum swung too far with and things started going wrong. When things go wrong in founder controlled company, things can go really wrong. Uber is the poster child. The question is how VCs can take back some control without being painted as founder hostile. You can see that happening with Benchmark. I am impressed that USV is speaking up. It is easy to hide in the shadows. [0] http://www.businessinsider.com/how-ciscos-founders-were-ousted-2014-12 http://www.businessinsider.com/how-ciscos-founders-were-oust...
- keganunderwood 9y ago
  I have no inside information but from my vantage point it looks like benchmark just wanted to get out but under isn't ready for an IPO. Maybe Travis isn't a good guy but I can't see how benchmark is any better. Also I think Google did bring in adults: notably Eric Schmidt.
thesausageking 9y ago
For those wondering about the allusion to Hatching Twitter, it describes in detail how, when Ev was CEO, Fred and the board told him he was doing a fantastic job and while secretly meeting with Jack and coming up with a plan to push Ev out and bring in Dick Costolo as CEO (with Jack under him). Here's a quote from the book after Ev was told he was out with a vicious quote from Fred: Williams, stunned, picked up the phone and began dialing. Bijan Sabet was apologetic and insisted that they wanted to keep him on in a product-advisory role. According to several people at the company, Fred Wilson, however, said he thought Williams had always been a terrible C.E.O. “I never considered you a founder,” he said. “Jack founded Twitter.” Other portfolio investments of Fred's have followed a similar pattern of having the original CEO pushed out once they get to a certain level of success.
- mbesto 9y ago
  > Other portfolio investments of Fred's have followed a similar pattern of having the original CEO pushed out once they get to a certain level of success. And honestly, they should. Managing a company through 50, 100, 150, 500 and 1,000+ employee milestones requires very different leadership skillsets. There are very few founders who (1) understand this (2) are willing to party ways with their company (3) can navigate through each stage without help and (4) would pull a Zuck and surround themselves with more established/senior people (e.g. Sandberg) as they hit those milestones. I'm all for young entrepreneurs challenging the status quo by thwarting an old guard of seemingly "old people" (a la Jack Barker), but this is one area that traditionally has a lot of "old people" simply because experience is incredible valuable to scaling companies. I haven't read "The Hard Thing About Hard Things", but my understanding is that it basically touches upon all of the intricacies of how to navigate business challenges that typically more experienced senior individuals possess.
  - falala1 9y ago
    Zuck was about to be fired as well. The board realized they could not fire him because he had a very iron clad founder friendly legal construct. That's when Sandberg came into the picture. Also, Zuck made Sandberg promise she would never go after his position before she came on.
    - CalChris 9y ago
      More than accelerated vesting, what did he have or could he have gotten and still raised money at that stage (2007?).
    - vm 9y ago
      Citations?
    - adventured 9y ago
      > Zuck was about to be fired as well. The board realized they could not fire him Your statement contradicts itself. He was not about to be fired, his legal standing guaranteed that could not occur. The investors and board fully understood the context the entire time, they invested knowing that it was Zuckerberg's kingdom. Besides, he was the board legally.
tarr11 9y ago
This blog proves the point of the initial tweet. VCs are founder-friendly until they have to side with the company. VCs are company-friendly until they have to side with their LPs.
TrobarClus 9y ago
> But there is another important participant in the VC/entrepreneur relationship and that is the Company the entrepreneur creates and all of its stakeholders; the employees, the customers, the suppliers, and even the community around the Company. The stakeholders are - the employees! The customers! The suppliers! The community! He makes it sound like that anarcho-syndicalist commune in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. I guess it slipped his mind to mention - the VCs! The LPs! The LPs looking for their exponential unicorn returns within ten years. Benchmark is alluded to, and Benchmark has a long history now where you can look into their machinations on boards - Uber. Twitter. Epinions. An LP is an LP. VCs have a few decorative ones for PR, but ultimately the LPs are just the LPs - the real ones. There are those who work and create wealth. There are also those that do not work - like LPs. Rentiers who expropriate surplus labor time from those of us who do work. Since the dawn of civilization there has been a tug of war between those who do work and those rentiers who do not. This is yet another occurrence of the tug of that rope from one side to the other. Today it is Uber, but it has been a host of other companies before, and if they have the ability they will be pulling the rug out from those who built the company again in the future. Wilson's doggerel here is a transparent apology for what is ultimately rentier parasitism. Parasitism on those of us who work by those who do not.
- elmar 9y ago
  > He makes it sound like that anarcho-syndicalist commune in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. It as been successfully done at Valve http://hbhblog.blogspot.pt/2013/03/valve-steam-anarcho-syndicalism.html http://hbhblog.blogspot.pt/2013/03/valve-steam-anarcho-syndi... http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2013/02/varoufakis_on_v.html http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2013/02/varoufakis_on_v.htm...
abstractoutlook 9y ago
I am glad this whole charade of investors pretending to be founder friendly is finally getting over. There isn't / has never been such a thing as "founder friendly". Investors pretend to be friendly so that they can convince entrepreneurs to take their money. It's not their true nature, just something you need to do to get into the right deals. Investors are always worried about their reputation, not character - if you know the difference. I learnt this lesson after getting kicked out of my company by VCs from NY (the story is not dramatically different than what Fred did at Twitter). My VCs always pretended to be incredibly supportive, but when we found ourselves in a tough spot, I saw the really ugly side of the VCs (making baseless threats to get the founders off the board, telling porkies to other investors to sullying the founders repuation, etc etc). In my experience, the east coast VCs are the worst - they play a lot more games / most of these guys are banker types. Most of them have never built a company before and have no clue what it takes to really build a successful startup (sorry, just because you sit on a board doesn't mean you understand the hard work, tears, daily ups and downs, personal sacrifice it takes to build a business).... These people know how to schmooze, and then stab you in the back if they don't get what they want.... Investors have 1 goal - maximize their ROI. They are your friend as long as they think they are getting the maximum return they can get. If you are an entrepreneur and you believe anything else, you are waiting to be screwed. As an entrepreneur, it's your job to protect yourself. If you are an entrepreneur reading this, take the following advice from someone who got f by people like Fred. 1. Read Brad Feld's book "Venture Deals" before you take money from any investors. Make sure you know every single terminology in the term sheet (this is where the wolf in the sheep's clothing reference is really true - VCs will screw you over if you don't understand the term sheet). 2. Hire an exec coach or a successful entrepreneur who has seen the ups & downs on your advisory board - someone you trust completely (Never trust your board member to be this person - no matter what anyone says). The advisor and the exec coach are your 1st phone calls - they are fully aligned with, unlike VCs. IA good exec coach can really help if you are dealing with tough board situations. f you are part of YC, you always have that support. 3. If you are a valley based company, avoid all east coast VCs if you can. They are all made from the same dirty cloth. 4. Maintain board control as long as you can. 5. Try to negotiate and get a final say on the independent board seat (often hard to get). 6. Learn how to manage your board - this is probably the most important advice. You need to know how to play the game, so that in tough times you have enough support to keep your job. If you don't have a board control, then try to build allies - perhaps build a strong relationship with 1-2 board members that will support you when others are trying to screw (which they will!). At the end of the day, it's all about leverage - as soon as you are about to get your first board member, think how you build leverage. There is nothing wrong in taking money from VCs, you need them, and they need you. But if you get into the relationship knowing this is not about friendship/relationship - it's just business, and when it comes to money, people act in all kinds of ways, you will not be under delusion. You will protect yourself from day one. Good luck!
HNNoLikey 9y ago
I think that it is incumbent upon an entrepreneur to apply they same magnitude of rigor (if not more) when conducting due diligence on investors as investors do when deciding whether to invest. This is, sadly, something that most entrepreneurs overlook due to eagerness to take up financing.
hoorayimhelping 9y ago
>The VC industry is highly competitive VC 'industry?' Please Fred, VC's don't produce anything. It's very charitable to call the class of people with access to money and the desire to lend it out under very favorable terms to company founders an industry.
TheHeasman 9y ago
Y'all know that there are business models where you don't need to take VC money to scale right?
_lex 9y ago
This is the principal agent problem in private, illiquid companies. There are issues with founders, employees and VCs, where each invest in "the company" with an expectation of different payoff schedules, and each is not at all looking out for the best interests of the others. So this is really a fight for the high ground - who gets to set payoff schedules: the founder, or the VC? Who gets to set strategic direction? And who's just along for the ride? [Note that the employee is not really in the running here, and that since they aren't allowed to set any rules, they should be as ruthless in extracting value (pay, career development & benefits) from companies as VCs and founders would be in extracting & securing their payoffs.] In the end, these people aren't your friends, and any friendliness is simply another form of currency, which they can chose to invalidate at any time. Like Benchmark Bucks.

97 points by _gbc 9y ago

VCs used to oust founders and bring in experienced operators as soon as a company started scaling. Cisco is one of many high profile cases of founders getting kicked out [0]. With the success of Google and Facebook, VCs pattern matched and became enamored with the founder. The pendulum swung too far with and things started going wrong. When things go wrong in founder controlled company, things can go really wrong. Uber is the poster child. The question is how VCs can take back some control without being painted as founder hostile. You can see that happening with Benchmark. I am impressed that USV is speaking up. It is easy to hide in the shadows. [0] http://www.businessinsider.com/how-ciscos-founders-were-ousted-2014-12 http://www.businessinsider.com/how-ciscos-founders-were-oust...

keganunderwood 9y ago
I have no inside information but from my vantage point it looks like benchmark just wanted to get out but under isn't ready for an IPO. Maybe Travis isn't a good guy but I can't see how benchmark is any better. Also I think Google did bring in adults: notably Eric Schmidt.

thesausageking 9y ago

For those wondering about the allusion to Hatching Twitter, it describes in detail how, when Ev was CEO, Fred and the board told him he was doing a fantastic job and while secretly meeting with Jack and coming up with a plan to push Ev out and bring in Dick Costolo as CEO (with Jack under him). Here's a quote from the book after Ev was told he was out with a vicious quote from Fred: Williams, stunned, picked up the phone and began dialing. Bijan Sabet was apologetic and insisted that they wanted to keep him on in a product-advisory role. According to several people at the company, Fred Wilson, however, said he thought Williams had always been a terrible C.E.O. “I never considered you a founder,” he said. “Jack founded Twitter.” Other portfolio investments of Fred's have followed a similar pattern of having the original CEO pushed out once they get to a certain level of success.

mbesto 9y ago
> Other portfolio investments of Fred's have followed a similar pattern of having the original CEO pushed out once they get to a certain level of success. And honestly, they should. Managing a company through 50, 100, 150, 500 and 1,000+ employee milestones requires very different leadership skillsets. There are very few founders who (1) understand this (2) are willing to party ways with their company (3) can navigate through each stage without help and (4) would pull a Zuck and surround themselves with more established/senior people (e.g. Sandberg) as they hit those milestones. I'm all for young entrepreneurs challenging the status quo by thwarting an old guard of seemingly "old people" (a la Jack Barker), but this is one area that traditionally has a lot of "old people" simply because experience is incredible valuable to scaling companies. I haven't read "The Hard Thing About Hard Things", but my understanding is that it basically touches upon all of the intricacies of how to navigate business challenges that typically more experienced senior individuals possess.
- falala1 9y ago
  Zuck was about to be fired as well. The board realized they could not fire him because he had a very iron clad founder friendly legal construct. That's when Sandberg came into the picture. Also, Zuck made Sandberg promise she would never go after his position before she came on.
  - CalChris 9y ago
    More than accelerated vesting, what did he have or could he have gotten and still raised money at that stage (2007?).
  - vm 9y ago
    Citations?
  - adventured 9y ago
    > Zuck was about to be fired as well. The board realized they could not fire him Your statement contradicts itself. He was not about to be fired, his legal standing guaranteed that could not occur. The investors and board fully understood the context the entire time, they invested knowing that it was Zuckerberg's kingdom. Besides, he was the board legally.

tarr11 9y ago

This blog proves the point of the initial tweet. VCs are founder-friendly until they have to side with the company. VCs are company-friendly until they have to side with their LPs.

TrobarClus 9y ago

> But there is another important participant in the VC/entrepreneur relationship and that is the Company the entrepreneur creates and all of its stakeholders; the employees, the customers, the suppliers, and even the community around the Company. The stakeholders are - the employees! The customers! The suppliers! The community! He makes it sound like that anarcho-syndicalist commune in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. I guess it slipped his mind to mention - the VCs! The LPs! The LPs looking for their exponential unicorn returns within ten years. Benchmark is alluded to, and Benchmark has a long history now where you can look into their machinations on boards - Uber. Twitter. Epinions. An LP is an LP. VCs have a few decorative ones for PR, but ultimately the LPs are just the LPs - the real ones. There are those who work and create wealth. There are also those that do not work - like LPs. Rentiers who expropriate surplus labor time from those of us who do work. Since the dawn of civilization there has been a tug of war between those who do work and those rentiers who do not. This is yet another occurrence of the tug of that rope from one side to the other. Today it is Uber, but it has been a host of other companies before, and if they have the ability they will be pulling the rug out from those who built the company again in the future. Wilson's doggerel here is a transparent apology for what is ultimately rentier parasitism. Parasitism on those of us who work by those who do not.

elmar 9y ago
> He makes it sound like that anarcho-syndicalist commune in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. It as been successfully done at Valve http://hbhblog.blogspot.pt/2013/03/valve-steam-anarcho-syndicalism.html http://hbhblog.blogspot.pt/2013/03/valve-steam-anarcho-syndi... http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2013/02/varoufakis_on_v.html http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2013/02/varoufakis_on_v.htm...

abstractoutlook 9y ago

I am glad this whole charade of investors pretending to be founder friendly is finally getting over. There isn't / has never been such a thing as "founder friendly". Investors pretend to be friendly so that they can convince entrepreneurs to take their money. It's not their true nature, just something you need to do to get into the right deals. Investors are always worried about their reputation, not character - if you know the difference. I learnt this lesson after getting kicked out of my company by VCs from NY (the story is not dramatically different than what Fred did at Twitter). My VCs always pretended to be incredibly supportive, but when we found ourselves in a tough spot, I saw the really ugly side of the VCs (making baseless threats to get the founders off the board, telling porkies to other investors to sullying the founders repuation, etc etc). In my experience, the east coast VCs are the worst - they play a lot more games / most of these guys are banker types. Most of them have never built a company before and have no clue what it takes to really build a successful startup (sorry, just because you sit on a board doesn't mean you understand the hard work, tears, daily ups and downs, personal sacrifice it takes to build a business).... These people know how to schmooze, and then stab you in the back if they don't get what they want.... Investors have 1 goal - maximize their ROI. They are your friend as long as they think they are getting the maximum return they can get. If you are an entrepreneur and you believe anything else, you are waiting to be screwed. As an entrepreneur, it's your job to protect yourself. If you are an entrepreneur reading this, take the following advice from someone who got f by people like Fred. 1. Read Brad Feld's book "Venture Deals" before you take money from any investors. Make sure you know every single terminology in the term sheet (this is where the wolf in the sheep's clothing reference is really true - VCs will screw you over if you don't understand the term sheet). 2. Hire an exec coach or a successful entrepreneur who has seen the ups & downs on your advisory board - someone you trust completely (Never trust your board member to be this person - no matter what anyone says). The advisor and the exec coach are your 1st phone calls - they are fully aligned with, unlike VCs. IA good exec coach can really help if you are dealing with tough board situations. f you are part of YC, you always have that support. 3. If you are a valley based company, avoid all east coast VCs if you can. They are all made from the same dirty cloth. 4. Maintain board control as long as you can. 5. Try to negotiate and get a final say on the independent board seat (often hard to get). 6. Learn how to manage your board - this is probably the most important advice. You need to know how to play the game, so that in tough times you have enough support to keep your job. If you don't have a board control, then try to build allies - perhaps build a strong relationship with 1-2 board members that will support you when others are trying to screw (which they will!). At the end of the day, it's all about leverage - as soon as you are about to get your first board member, think how you build leverage. There is nothing wrong in taking money from VCs, you need them, and they need you. But if you get into the relationship knowing this is not about friendship/relationship - it's just business, and when it comes to money, people act in all kinds of ways, you will not be under delusion. You will protect yourself from day one. Good luck!

HNNoLikey 9y ago

I think that it is incumbent upon an entrepreneur to apply they same magnitude of rigor (if not more) when conducting due diligence on investors as investors do when deciding whether to invest. This is, sadly, something that most entrepreneurs overlook due to eagerness to take up financing.

hoorayimhelping 9y ago

>The VC industry is highly competitive VC 'industry?' Please Fred, VC's don't produce anything. It's very charitable to call the class of people with access to money and the desire to lend it out under very favorable terms to company founders an industry.

TheHeasman 9y ago

Y'all know that there are business models where you don't need to take VC money to scale right?

_lex 9y ago

This is the principal agent problem in private, illiquid companies. There are issues with founders, employees and VCs, where each invest in "the company" with an expectation of different payoff schedules, and each is not at all looking out for the best interests of the others. So this is really a fight for the high ground - who gets to set payoff schedules: the founder, or the VC? Who gets to set strategic direction? And who's just along for the ride? [Note that the employee is not really in the running here, and that since they aren't allowed to set any rules, they should be as ruthless in extracting value (pay, career development & benefits) from companies as VCs and founders would be in extracting & securing their payoffs.] In the end, these people aren't your friends, and any friendliness is simply another form of currency, which they can chose to invalidate at any time. Like Benchmark Bucks.