"I don’t know if I’m right in thinking this, but I only have silence to go on, which is always a poor source of information."
its standard verbaige industry wide
your LPs can just be two neighbors that dont like each other
you can make up whatever helps you sleep at night its just not that complicated
It is, but I'm not sure it's for the reasons you are implying. First and foremost, Saudi money and oil money is an enormous part of global wealth /full stop/. That deep degree of intermixing happened decades ago; there's no putting that cat back in the bag. Asking a question like this to VCs who you are ostensibly trying to make a good first impression upon is akin to telling someone that you don't have sex on the first date. Perhaps you don't, but phrasing it that way is a seriously tonedeaf way to signal it.
If your primary motivation as a founder is to raise "untainted" money rather than money on good terms and from partners who can help you, I wonder whether you should be fundraising for a VC funded startup at all. This isn't meant as a dig at you -- I just think that the VC funded startup path is often considered a default path, and there are a lot of founders with amazing things to offer the world that might benefit from alternate financing more than VC. If you're concerned about LP fund sources for VC, then alternate funding may be something worth considering.
It's all a bit of a straw man. I'm curious what motivations are backing your reasons for advocating for this position?
I guess I should add a bit more color here, which is I also don't necessarily think of this tainting as a purely moral question, as I believe it's also a logistical one. The more money is being managed by a fund, the more likely it is that some nefarious utilizations of it will come into the picture. I think of it a lot like the law of large numbers.
I also think that even though you're right, avoiding truly tainted money is near impossible, asking the question puts VCs on blast, something I feel fortunate to have been able to do (even if not common and they just ignore me as an edge case).
Just as one point of clarification, I always asked after the partner pitch, so I felt like we'd dated enough that it was an acceptable question to ask (I could very well be wrong).
> I always asked after the partner pitch, so I felt like we'd dated enough that it was an acceptable question to ask (I could very well be wrong).
This is a key piece of information that does not match my presumption. At that level in the process, to continue our dating analogy, I think this kind of question or concern is a lot more reasonable. But with that said, I think it is unfortunately a concern that will be a dealbreaker for a vast majority of VCs.
With that said, the plus side is that alternate funding vehicles are more powerful than ever, whether that's crowdfunding, angels, alumni syndicates, revenue based funding, user based pre-orders. I respect that this may not have been the case when you last raised, but certainly this past year has minted an enormous amount of new HNW investors chomping at the bit to put their money into interesting causes, some for profit and some not. Dis-intermediating the VC has never been so viable as it is now, in my opinion.
I'm curious now. Why is it poor form?
> Perhaps you don't, but phrasing it that way is a seriously tonedeaf way to signal it.
So you're saying they should have phrased the question differently - perhaps they did in fact do that.
But I think asking is perfectly legitimate.
Now I'm not implying you said this, but I feel like I should point something out anyways: Raising questions of morality is not poor form because it might make someone uncomfortable about what they're doing. That's kind of what morality is about. "How dare you make me think about the bloodstains on my money" is not exactly a form of indignation that'll get you people rallying in support.
'Who the LP's are' is basically none of your business unless you are entering into some kind of relationship, even then - it may be out of bounds. Of course you have the right to not take money even in that case, but that's a different thing then knowing when to ask.
All of this talk about 'tainted money' is bordering on naive - it's very subjective, moreover, if people would actually take a moment to grasp how this world operates they might find a lot of things they don't agree with.
I'm not suggesting people don't make decisions about where their money comes from - that's very reasonable - rather that it's much more complicated than 'boycott Nike or Chic-Filet' populism.
As far as LP's - it's definitely not a question you ask, unsolicited, over email, without an established relationship.
You can try to do your own research on it, or, ask 'in person' once you have some semblance of a material conversation with an investor and hope they give you a hint one way or another. It would help to ask it in an informal, indirect manner, possibly lumped in with a few other speculative LP questions.
It would be like some random person on the internet sending you an email, asking about specific details on your cap table.
They pay the investment firm to invest their money, typically 2% of funds invested annually plus 20% of any realized profits.
Everyone is a hypocrite given the right context.
I didn’t really see concerned Americans setting aside their superfluous materialism to spring child political prisoners from cages.
To the people of the U.S.: time to stop believing what the TV told you about your place in the world when you were children. Your military and elite are responsible for the vast majority of the environmental destruction impacting everyone.
Let’s sober up a bit, shall we?
Downvoters probably prejudged my political position from the observation. No hard feelings.