My take on work is there's always someone who will be your boss and dictate what you can and cannot do. If you bootstrap, then it'll be your paying customers. If you take family/angel/seed money, then it'll be them and their expectations. If it's VC money, they will have a seat on the board and expect you perform. If it's the public market, then every quarter you'll be expected to show significant results.

I fail to see how a nightmare isn't just code for, I don't like what this person wants me to do, I did this startup to get away from having a boss, but feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.

I appreciate the thoughts, but no. That's not what is going on here. Without going into too much detail, if anything the problem is essentially the opposite of what you're describing.

Can you elaborate?

I think TFA did a better job with that than I ever could.

Regardless, my short summary is that VCs, in my experience, are the worst of people who don't give a shit about you or your team, and just want to see more and more money. I don't want to deal with or be involved with people like that.

Edit: Also I should note, many of our VCs pitched themselves as 'angel' and 'impact' investors. So, while I didn't expect them to just hand us free money, I also didn't expect quite the level of cut-throat behavior we've seen.

interesting we decided to bootstrap in 2016. Chasing down VC's is such a time drain when you can focus on your product. we now have about 28k users.

Good for you! Doesn’t seem like a hard fork in the road though. You could probably raise a round much easier on way better terms now that you’ve proved the business. Maybe you’ll hit a point where the infusion of money really would make a difference.

Yes, this is a strong point. VC money saves time but then getting VC money takes time.

Well, that's kinda expected isn't it? Also keeping in mind that essentially 9/10 startups fail, VC's are well aware of that and basically treat you that way. Welcome to the lions den!

Why would they care about you or your team? It is an investment, not a social service.

Business partners are not family, sure.

On the other hand, you could easily argue that almost everything is "just business". The doctor is there to treat you, not care about you, your boss is there to extract labor from you, not care about you, your child's teacher is there to impart knowledge, not care about her.

Such black-and-white separation of concerns doesn't really fit well with being human, IMO. In most of these cases we want something less than intimacy but more than indifference.

A company is composed of people, redo the math.

What exactly does "cut-throat" behavior entail in this case?

I've probably already said more than I should at this point under my 'real name'. Maybe once things are fully done and settled I'll do a write up.