BRAVE: Founder Control VS. VC Governance, Exit Risk & Value Protection - E665
episode
BRAVE Southeast Asia Tech: Singapore, Indonesia, Vietnam, Philippines, Thailand & Malaysia Startups, Founders & Venture Capital VC (English)
14 min
1 speaker
8 chapters
transcribed 17 days ago
Transcript
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Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Why do investors regret weak control rights after a founder goes rogue?
And I literally got a message recently, just two hours ago, from a VC and he's telling me about a founder that has gone rogue in Indonesia and he's not replying to any of the investors, right? So in that scenario you can imagine that the investors are thinking themselves, Oh man, I wish that we had negotiated for more. uh control measures. But on the other hand, also if you have these draconian control measures, then would the overall founder market look at you as somebody who's doesn't trust founders and not founder friendly as a result, refuse to take your capital as a result. Welcome to Brave. Learn from Southeast Asia's best tech leaders. Build the future, learn from our past, and stay human in between.
No BS on Success. I'm Jeremy O, Venture Capitalist, Sarah Founder, Harvard MBA, Science Fiction Nerd, and Dad of Two Daughters. Every week, we debate startup news, interview change makers, answer listener questions, and share personal insights. Join our movement of over 40,000 members and get transcripts, resources, and community at www.bravesea.com. Stay well and stay brave. So we're talking about exit management, which is a key skill that VC funds are doing. We'll also be talking about regulatory affairs, which actually t touches nicely with the guests that we just had earlier today, about how startups have to fight to preserve their value over time. So you can see Nasdaq and IPO, Blue City. So this was the world's first LGBTQ IPO, Chinese company.
Look at that, I'm so happy. And they raised about $85 million on Nasdaq, so it's a Chinese company. And then after some time, they faced a lot of selling pressure, the price dropped, and they took the company private. So this is interesting story, but says something for you guys to think about, which is, you know, we're talking about exits and the proceeds from that. So we'll talk about Exit management, the recap that we have is that we talked about how every VC has to be able to source, select, close the deal, then support the startup, and then eventually exit. And so we talked about how VCs have to issue term sheets, negotiate, convert them to a long form, do due diligence, and you know, sign the long forms to documents and then eventually wire the capital.
So When you do that, obviously you're building the trust, you're setting up the board seats, you're setting up the structures. Hopefully, for a long-term relationship, they're successful over the long term, right? And so there's always gonna be that dynamic where you have control provisions that you're thinking about. And I literally got a message recently, just two hours ago, from a VC, and he's telling me about a founder that has gone rogue in Indonesia, and he's not replying to any. the investors, right? So in that scenario, you can imagine that the investors are thinking themselves.
How does exit management differ from building value for a startup?
Oh man, I wish that we had negotiated for more. uh control measures. But on the other hand, also if you have these draconian control measures, then would the overall founder market look at you as somebody who's doesn't trust founders and not founder friendly as a result, refuse to take your capital as a result. So I think this is kind of something that we do think about quite a bit. And so we talk about how these term sheets are important because they cover two sets, financial terms versus control rights. And financial terms are basically saying depending on what size the pipe eventually becomes, what percentage do we get at the end of the day? And so you can imagine we talk about check sizes, we talk about devaluation, we talk about price per share, we talk about employee option pool, we talk about liquidation preferences, and we talk about anti-dilution clauses.
We'll also talk about control terms, right? Which is that how do you split decision making autonomy between the board, that you may understand, the composition within the board between late stage and early stage investors, but also the other protection provisions that govern the disputes or disagreements that can be happened for these startups.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
Why do investors regret weak control rights after a founder goes rogue?
0:00–2:49
2
How does exit management differ from building value for a startup?
2:49–5:46
3
What are the risks of light‑touch governance that can lead to fraud in emerging markets?
5:46–7:41
4
How does growth‑at‑all‑costs pressure create revenue‑inflation fraud?
7:41–9:31
5
What governance structures can protect founders while preventing value destruction?
9:31–12:26
6
Which patterns of startup failure should VCs watch for when scaling fast?
12:26–14:02
7
How do macro‑shocks like crypto winters or AI crashes affect exit risk?
14:02–14:48
8
What value‑add can top‑tier VCs provide to founders beyond capital?
14:48–14:50
Speakers
1 identifiedMore from BRAVE Southeast Asia Tech: Singapore, Indonesia, Vietnam, Philippines, Thailand & Malaysia Startups, Founders & Venture Capital VC (English)
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