It's hard to argue against those who say private equity ruins everything. It's astonishing. And massively depressing.
You can download for free when you search the 'net for Founderstowne.
Pages in my book related to how private-equity screwed over the vet industry: 250. 442. 1001.
I think people will be blown away that the company that makes M&Ms owns a ton of vets.
Massive respects to your journalism, I have a lot of questions regarding this tho, namely how long did it take you to build this expose and where are you gonna drop it because I searched net for Founderstowne but I didn't find anything special, are they the VC fund you are gonna expose?
I expose just about everyone as a "roman a clef" (a work of "fiction":>).
I'm 58 years old. Entrepreneurial builder. Disgusted by VC/PE. Been writing this book since 1987.
During my journey I took a beat and pointed my new skills at VCs. I interviewed a few dozen VCs trying to understand what they were trying to get done and what mattered to them, but with a bit of a bias trying to gauge whether they wanted to better predict market demand of their portfolio or prospective investments' products.
What I learned shocked me a bit. The sense I got was that they didn't really care about market demand or building a strong business, they mostly cared if the founder could sell the company up to food chain (series a, b, c etc).
Roughly speaking: "I don't care what value my portfolio companies create, I care about marking up my book so I can increase my take".
I don't know how much this had to do with ZIRP, but it really soured me to the VC industry. I've been committed to bootstrapping my companies ever since.
Also, the two links in your profile do not work
I see a post with 13 points (upvotes / positive reactions) and [flagged] (meaning the title alone upset a few people given there's been no time to read the content yet).
As with all HN submissions, YMMV - Your Mileage May Vary
When I get sued (and I will), I'll employ "roman a clef" and slightly fictionalize the names.
By the way, VCs are not exactly any better than PE firms.
I've tried to reach out Marc Andreesen to see if he can 100% pivot to building instead of extracting. I'm encouraged by his latest fund.
And even if you know for a fact that you aren't at fault, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure and all that. The legal process isn't exactly cheap.