Maybe you're too close to the situation so what you say above feels to you like a universal truth but it actually doesn't help me as a reader.

To raise the quality of discussion, we'd need to know what your realistic options were at the time you raised Series A.

E.g... Did you have meaningful revenue making VC capital optional? Did you need VC money to have a runway and make payroll for a few months?

In other words, if you're in a situation where rejecting VC money means your business shuts down, it becomes a moot point if you're still 100% in control of all board seats.

As for board seats composition, was it something like You=1, VC=1, and Independent=1? If so, was the independent automatically on VC's side to fire you or were they truly independent?

If you don't want to get into the details to maintain privacy, that's understandable. But also understand that your advice born out of your experience doesn't have enough context for us.

To raise the quality of discussion, we need for all the email and Signal messages from the investors / VCs for a variety of deals to be made public. That would be a major step towards reducing the amount of information arbitrage in start-up funding (not to mention blog posts like the OP).

(with tons of apologies to Margaret Thatcher)

But founders should talk to other founders about their experience with different investors. The good, the bad and the ugly.

In those situations, you can make it clear - in objective terms - what happened and why you would not take money from them again. Don't call them names or anything.

Did they at least buy you out or did they literally rob you of your company?

I think, in Germany it's different, sorry.