[mbesto]

> In fact, the vast majority of the investors I’ve met, even those that have fired founders, are good people. It’s deeper than that, even. Investors mostly want to do the right thing for founders. There are emotional and business reasons for this impulse, but ultimately the fiduciary responsibility has to win. Founders need to understand that venture investing is a business where friendship is an input or an outcome, and not the other way around.

Cynical viewpoint coming in:

VC investors are only "good people" because that is what currently drives the market for dealflow. What I think a lot of entrepreneurs miss is that VCs are finance professionals first and foremost. If the market dynamic starts to change, you might see them behaving differently but still aligned ultimately to the interest of their LPs.

TL;DR - VCs who create good content, are helpful, are nice to founders, etc. ("founder friendly") in a professional context are only that way because it's generally what has been proven to generate good leads for deal flow.

[Cederfjard]

These are humans, after all. It seems unlikely that all of them should be unscrupulous, fundamentally dishonest, profit-maximizing robots who only exhibit benevolent traits as a charade to lure in entrepreneurs. Surely some are simply good people.

[yowlingcat]

It sounds a little hyperbolic and black and white to consider those two things as being mutually exclusive. It's possible (and maybe even common) for someone to be a good person to others in matters that don't pertain to money -- but, when the rubber hits the road with respect to money, they end up being making decisions that make sense given how much leverage they have. At the end of the day, VCs are subject to their LP stakeholders. They are also subject to their founder stakeholders, but the degree to which the various entities in that three legged interaction hold sway varies based on environment.

In a frothy environment like the present, founders really do have a lot of leverage because the demand for investable companies in many ways greatly outstrips supply; you see this in the SPAC craze. But in other environments, LPs and VCs have a lot more leverage over founders. When that is the case, it is only reasonable to expect them to behave according to their incentives. Now one could make the argument that it's still a poor long-term decision for VCs to sour community goodwill if they want to be in the game long-term. That may be the case, but it doesn't mean that a cunning VC cannot profit from exploitation in the medium term, enough to enrich themselves to the level where a poor reputation doesn't prevent them from continuing to operate.

It's important to not over-anthropomorphize the way that financial professionals operate as agents in a system with incentives. When they do something unsavory, it's generally not meant to be personal even if the result is incredibly unsavory.

[akharris]

I don't think it makes sense to lump a whole group of people into a single categorization this way. You're right that being seen as good helps drive deal flow, but, again, most of the people I've worked with are actually pretty "good" in the moral/ethical sense.

Where and how personal ethics, business ethics, business needs, financial incentives come together and produce results is immensely complicated.