| Raised money from VCs for my last startup. Series A investor made all sorts of overtures about how founder friendly they were and how supportive they would be. The week after we closed our series A they told me I had to hire a COO. I asked, "You trying to get me to hire my replacement?" "No, we'd never do that. How could you even think that?" Less than two months after we hired the COO they fired me. The COO was made the CEO and he ran the company into the ground. The lesson for founders is to never, ever, ever give up control of your board/company. Always maintain control of a majority of the board seats. |
Maybe you're too close to the situation so what you say above feels to you like a universal truth but it actually doesn't help me as a reader.
To raise the quality of discussion, we'd need to know what your realistic options were at the time you raised Series A.
E.g... Did you have meaningful revenue making VC capital optional? Did you need VC money to have a runway and make payroll for a few months?
In other words, if you're in a situation where rejecting VC money means your business shuts down, it becomes a moot point if you're still 100% in control of all board seats.
As for board seats composition, was it something like You=1, VC=1, and Independent=1? If so, was the independent automatically on VC's side to fire you or were they truly independent?
If you don't want to get into the details to maintain privacy, that's understandable. But also understand that your advice born out of your experience doesn't have enough context for us.