Play poker with investors, not roulette

There is an analogy here but it's not that you're playing poker against investors. As a startup founder, you are the house. You are trying to attract players who will place a bet. If your startup is a good bet you want to attract poker players who will play against each other and bet big based on the odds. If your startup is a bad bet, you want to attract roulette players who will play against the odds and bet against you.

Good poker players play based on statistics and pot odds. They want to bet the same way they would if they had all of the information in front of them and could calculate that the exact odds are in their favor. If you have a great startup, a.k.a. a favorable hand/game for making an educated bet, you want to show as much information as possible and attract poker players. It's okay to let dummies play, too, as long as they're not reckless drunks, and you have nothing to lose in showing them all of the available information, too. And the winning outcome is when your poker playing investors win their hand, and tip you big as the dealer.

If the odds are stacked against your company, you need to deceive players into thinking you're a good bet or attract players who don't know any better. That requires either hiding information or, worse, bluffing. Roulette players have the odds stacked against them and are just gambling, either because they believe in getting lucky or lack the ability to play a game of skill. So, if you have a bad startup, you're trying to attract gamblers and give them less information so that they think they have a chance of winning even though it's a long shot.

Basically, you're not playing poker against the investors. You're just trying to attract players. The kind of players you want depends on the game you're offering. If your game is a good one that educated players can make money at, give them all of the information. If your game is stacked against the players, attract drunkards and don't tell them how bad their odds are.