VCs don't like dead equity, they will have pressed for this. Nonetheless you cannot lie and this could have been resolved with integrity.
They were raising a new round and my old grant was a sticking point because the new investors weren't content with the company not having a record of my exercise.
I signed because it helped them out, cost me nothing and seemed like the right thing to do. Just think it was funny that a VC was so averse to dead equity that they made the company make sure someone who wasn't on the cap table agreed that they weren't on the cap table.
Isn’t a VC investment dead equity?
Dead equity does none of the these things. Think of it as spent or no longer in play.
I don't know why some people are so touchy about the term. It's not a value judgment on the contributor. Furthermore, I would argue that a lot of the time Angel investment or friends and family investment is dead Equity too