[kimcheeme]

The startup idea failed and the founders do not have another idea / the seed investors do not want to give the founders any more money than what's already invested. So then you should let the markets decide what the price of the assets are. The assets of the idea and the assets of human capital.

1) The investor can still say that they had an acquisition exit and make their portfolio seem better than it is.

2) If you don't have strong enough connections where the strategic players will throw you a bone for a long-lasting relationship with your fund then you don't deserve the bone.

3) Investors gave founders education but the founders also gave investors education that they can leverage lessons in future investments.

4) Investors frequently say that they're investing in people but at the end of the day, they investing in people to execute the good idea and they would not hesitate to replace another set of people to execute that good idea... so in essence, they're investing in a good idea. What kind of investing are you doing when you invested in a bad idea and expect to get paid PAR for making the wrong call. A zero downside early stage investing but 1000x upside seems like a fantasy market that, even if it lasted for a year or two, would have never worked out in the long-run.