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The VC acid test as a founder (2017)

“A contract is only as good as the people who sign it,” was a saying often quoted by an elderly attorney I worked with for the first fifteen years of my practice and I always nodded in his general direction when he said that and smiled as if agreeing. I liked and respected him, he had won more cases than there were months in my life at the time and he had lived in a legal and business world in which the entire community knew one another and knew who to trust.

“A contract is only as good as the people who sign it,” was a saying often quoted by an elderly attorney I worked with for the first fifteen years of my practice and I always nodded in his general direction when he said that and smiled as if agreeing. Of course he was wrong in that, several other competing products came out a few years later….but he was dead right in that there are some pretty good tests that anyone can use to determine if a potential business partner is more interested in seizing power than sharing profits, as can be seen by what happened in this negotiation. “It is unusual to begin at the enforcement of contracts end of our discussions, I realize, but it is important for us to know if the document we eventually create is practical from our point of view.” He was a bit surprised and raised his eyebrows.

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