It really seems to depend on the company stage. If the answer to, "did you do everything you could?" is, "well, we could have put %20 more time and effort into

It really seems to depend on the company stage. If the answer to, "did you do everything you could?" is, "well, we could have put %20 more time and effort into it with no additional cash burn," I could see how that could be interpreted as negligence from a fiduciary perspective. On the other hand, %20 less office time could be an honest signal that you are taking risks commensurate with the return level your investors are looking for. If as a founder or leader, you are careful and incremental, I don't think that's what investors put money into VC funds for. The number of stories I read here and elsewhere about investors saying, "I don't want this money back, I want a huge return or nothing, because I don't want to learn I put it behind someone who wasn't committed enough to fail hard." Investors aren't paying you and your team to work, they are paying for the privilege of getting a piece of a massive outcome. You achieve the outcome they want exposure to the best way you know how, and if imposing a risk constraint like %20 less office time does it, great. In this view, you are not their employee, you are their dealer. I could see how it would be hard to persuade investors you were working in their best interest with an attitude like that, but on the other hand, it could be one that is necessary to enable the best possible outcome. It sounds crazy, but the investors themselves are the correlation factor in their portfolio, and the point of putting money into a diversified portfolio of startups is to hedge that correlation, so the more opinionated the investor is about your office culture or other aspects of the business, it's likely the worse they are going to do. No clear answer, but really interesting question.