https://voidzero.dev/posts/voidzero-cloudflare#acknowledgeme...

I'll share a story, but its about a close friend and not me so I won't name any explicit actors and I'm going to round out the numbers. You either trust me or you don't, but this is a very direct relationship I have to both the founder and VC.

The story is this: the founder started their company outside of SV, so the lawyers weren't super familiar with startups and messed up the initial incorporation and stock plan stuff (actually super common: use Stripe Atlas or pay a startup-aware lawyer!). Went under the radar through years. This company ended up being bought for nearly $1B (with a B) after many rounds and a large board.

During the legal work to close the acquisition, they found out this messed up stock plan. Without going into the details, the effect was that instead of taking home $200M, the founder would take home ~$75M. The mistake the lawyer made almost a decade earlier was about to cost him $125M.

Most of the board basically said "too bad so sad, law is law." But one VC (the one I know, the one I'm talking about) basically strong armed and politicked the whole thing and eventually convinced everyone around the table to give up an equal share of their own holdings to make the founder whole.

Letter to the law: they didn't have to.

Spirit of being founder friendly: this VC went to bat hard and got everyone to yield to make things "right."

Also, look, you might argue $75M vs $200M is just "rich vs rich." Who cares? Sure. That's not the point.

You don't hear about stuff like this because honestly its not a big enough deal and feel good stories get way less clicks than pitchfork stories.

The VC landscape has changed a lot since some of these stories happened. Many years ago, there were few VCs and even good companies had a hard time getting funding. This created weird environments with some VCs raised funds and then liked having companies crawl to them to beg for the money.

There are still some VCs like that, but there has been an explosion of VC funds and money. Most VCs know they need to work hard to earn the trust of founders that they want to invest in. Leaving a bad impression could mean you're left out of the next round if you want it.

This goes against the popular idea of VCs, but most VCs I've worked with are actually pretty boring, normal, nice people.

source: most of the bullshit i surface up nowadays

None of those "worst experiences" seem all that unusual to me (though nobody will say #1 out loud anymore until after they've invested), and #3 is completely in character for Vinod.