Your work and background seems valuable and impressive, and is far superior to me in VC. I would like to learn more from you.
As a comments on your statements taken in isolation:
what requires board consent, what is the past history of investor updates, what conflicts of interest exist and mechanisms to resolve them etc
It is surprising if an early-VC looked at things like board, board consent. I expect the main thing they would look at is team.
Certainly in tech, boards are usually not respected, even in later larger companies, much less a small early stage project. Are you conflating board and board control, with founder/lead team dynamics?
All things that should have, if press reports are accurate, provided ample red flags prior to an investment, even before getting into forensic accounting etc.
In my opinion, most projects would bomb this, including Apple, Facebook, etc. (modulo the claimed romantic/sexual relationships, and even then that’s not clear).
Fear of missing out on a competitive round can drive normally savvy investors to skip or discount results of the normal dd process.
I understand the most negative narratives of the VC investment in FTX (“I LOVE THIS FOUNDER”).
At the same time, it’s not clear it’s ex ante terrible. It was clear what they were investing in, and that was almost no control or visibility into the organization.
Most elite/top/successful founding teams want exactly the arrangement SBF achieved, because VC control or influence is seen as (strongly) net negative. If this is true, this cannot be a signal or red flag.
Your work and background seems valuable and impressive, and is far superior to me in VC. I would like to learn more from you.
As a comments on your statements taken in isolation:
It is surprising if an early-VC looked at things like board, board consent. I expect the main thing they would look at is team.
Certainly in tech, boards are usually not respected, even in later larger companies, much less a small early stage project. Are you conflating board and board control, with founder/lead team dynamics?
In my opinion, most projects would bomb this, including Apple, Facebook, etc. (modulo the claimed romantic/sexual relationships, and even then that’s not clear).
I understand the most negative narratives of the VC investment in FTX (“I LOVE THIS FOUNDER”).
At the same time, it’s not clear it’s ex ante terrible. It was clear what they were investing in, and that was almost no control or visibility into the organization.
Most elite/top/successful founding teams want exactly the arrangement SBF achieved, because VC control or influence is seen as (strongly) net negative. If this is true, this cannot be a signal or red flag.