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Ron Conway had invested in this startup Ev Williams was doing before Twitter that did not work out. Ev Williams returned money to Ron Conway, and I believe the
by zeeshanm 12y ago
Ron Conway had invested in this startup Ev Williams was doing before Twitter that did not work out. Ev Williams returned money to Ron Conway, and I believe the story goes Ron said he would invest in whatever startup Williams starts next. That happened to be Twitter in which Ron Conway invested.
I guess the moral of this story is to do the right thing. This may sound cliche', but sometimes doing the right thing may be the most courageous thing to do.
- eli 12y agoMaybe this is a dumb question, but do most failed startups still have enough capital to repay seed investors when the founder pulls the plug? I wonder if there's a more subtle lesson in that story about knowing when to quit.
- richardwhiuk 12y agoNo - he'll probably have got a small proportion of his stake left. If they were able to repay their seed capital, then it's a self sustaining business - there's a very thin line between success and failure here.
- palakchokshi 12y agoWe did have about 1/5th of our angel money left when we decided to call it quits. There were a number of reasons for doing so at that time. Primarily, the remaining money would not have gotten us to where we wanted to be and we were not able to raise more money due to our inexperience (first time founders). We did return the remaining amount because that's the right thing to do. No need to burn bridges.