[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.