Weird interaction with potential investor… How should I react?

[invinoveritas]

Hey community! I’ll try to make this very weird story as short as possible…

I’m a founder of a deep-tech co. We are in the life science/healthcare area, have raised 500k USD, and are hitting some very decent milestones for the type of co we are.

I started fundraising for a Seed round. I speak to a VC, we had a couple of meetings with a partner, things seem to be going ok. He says: I’d like you to pitch the co to the board, so that we can make a decision on whether to invest or not. Cool, I make the pitch, show some data, everything goes very well. I get a message from the CEO of the VC, he tells me that “he loved the pitch” and he just wanted me to meet with a board member that was OOO at the time due a personal problem, and the reason he wanted me to meet with him was that he was the “medical expert”.

I meet the guy, on zoom, after abt 10min, he stsrts going off about the co being “too early stage”, him “being dissapointed” on how little progress we made during the past 6 months, and how my scientific team was “way too young” (avg age 33 years old)

So I close the meeting asking him “hey listen I need to understand, are you in or are you out, because you’ve been complaining for 45’ so just give it to me straight”. He says “on behalf of XXX fund, we’re out, too early stage”. Ok, cool, farewell… I leave the meeting and not 3min later he access my deck on Docsend. Since he is out, I deactivate the link, no reason for him to have it. Since then he tried to access it 4 more times.

Should I send him an email saying “hey bro, you said you were out, why are truing to access the deck for a company you opted out of?” Or should I just let it go and play dumb?

This is the first time I’ve seen this happen. When someone says “pass” they PASS. This seems like he could be trying to use our deck as intel for some other company… I don’t know…

 

[smithe7]

@invinoveritas Leave it be.

There's no upside gain to interacting further with that fund right now.

 

[invinoveritas]

@smithe7 I feel you. I agree that there’s no evident upside to interacting with THE FUND. My problem is that if this guy is trying to steal info, copy our strategy, or copy slides for another company, just felt like it could be a good idea to let him know he’s being watched (although he should have known that when using DocSend)

 

[garsimtha]

@invinoveritas You’re thinking too far into it. Leave it alone

 

[aglcmohan]

@invinoveritas As others said, let it go. They have thousands of decks if they are an active vc firm in the space. I have thousands of decks, I always save but rarely look at them.

Nobody will build your idea based on a deck unless you shared the key to completely copying your business, in which case it's already out there (as you pitched it) and is not that valuable (since one can copy it just by looking at your deck).

Just forget it. I know he increased your cortisol levels a bit but fundraising is always like that. People will frustrate, treat you unfair or fair or whatever, none of it matters, focus on getting the cash in and moving forward! Good luck with the startup.

 

[leopard1]

@invinoveritas As others have said, just let it go, but I'll go a little further. Take a look at yourself and figure out why you are having this reaction. Raising funds is a brutal gambit and weird feeling stuff like this is going to happen very often. You don't want to put yourself through this roller coaster each time. We have an investor who has been "2 weeks from an LOI" for over 3 years. We have an investor who passes every single time he talks to us....every 6 months. But keeps coming back, every meeting we learn something new from him and they make a new intro.

Protect yourself, don't get paranoid. This is a marathon not a sprint. There's a million explanations why this person wants to access your deck again.

 

[invinoveritas]

@leopard1 I generally agree with most of what you said. The one part I disagree with is “there’s millions of explanations why they keep accessing the deck after they passed”…
I don’t think that is true.

Fundraising is brutal. I agree. People (and VCs mostly) behave in very strange ways. Agree. Some will disrispect you. Agree. But here’s the thing I’ve seen with VCs: a yes is a never a yes, it might mean yes now, yes in 4 months, yes but I have to make a capital call, yes = maybe but I don’t wanna be left out, etc. But NO means always no. It’s not ambigous. No means “no, fuck off”. And when you get a NO they will usually close the file they had on you in 30sec and never think of you again.

What’s weird is that here it was NO but he keeps digging. This is uncharacteristic behaviour, and I don’t think there’s a million explanations… that’s why I posted, cuz I’m baffled

 

[leopard1]

@invinoveritas I used to work for a corporate VC. reasons why I have accessed pitch decks after 'no' is my boss gave me no, but I believed in the company and wanted to repitch, I've shared the link with others and they didn't get around to checking it until after the no, I've been cleaning out my inbox and accidentally clicked the link because I thought it was something else, I've had it open in one of my tabs (i currently have about 400 tabs open) and when I refresh the browser it looks like I clicked it again. Theres a ton of stupid, completely inconsequential reasons it could be happening. Is it a bit weird? yeah maybe, but you will be happier never ascribing malice to something that stupidity works just as well

 

[invinoveritas]

@leopard1 I totally agree with stupidity, meaning he refrsshed a tab (weird cuz one of the attempts was at 8:00pm), clicked the link in error (weird cuz he attempted 3 times), or just any other honest mistake…

In this case, it clearly wasn’t that he believed in the company and wanted to keep pushing, on the contrary, one of the partners gave great feedback, his was as bad as it gets, and in plain english he said “if this goes to the investment commitee I cannot and will not vote for it because I think it’s too early stage”, so clearly he was not looking at the deck in an attempt to advocate for us…

But still, there could be a few reasons, can’t think of any, why someone would mistakenly attempt 3 times at 3 very different times, to log in and learn more on a company he just said, in no uncertain terms, was uninvestable for his fund and that he could not see “any way we could make this work”… I think I’ll convince myself it’s nothing, but not sure I have many arguments to support that

 

[leopard1]

@invinoveritas 100% understand. Good luck on your journey and if you ever want to talk through something don't hesitate to reach out. I've been around this game for a while.

 

[613jono]

@invinoveritas There are a million variables at play so it’s hard to say. My best guess is that the “too early” line is BS, there an angel that’s what they do lol.

It could be:
1. They went though your linked in and found a shared connection and got a reference that didn’t go well.

1. Angels need to make sure that the funding they give you lasts to the next round. They could have asked other VCs they’ve worked with if they’re interested and they said no.
2. The last guy you meant may have his own deal with a company in the same space so he wants to kill your deal.

The third seems most likely and would also explain why he wants to keep looking at your deck. (Make sure anything else you shared with him is locked down)

 

[invinoveritas]

@613jono I think this is the only answer that’s addressing the problem, being a guy who very blatantly passed, with no legitimate business need to be looking at the deck, still stalking it. I like when advise goes further than “fuck it forget about it”