You're not really wrong. However, it was a power play by the VC and to make themselves feel important. Hopefully they grew up a bit since then.

No matter how you look at it, if the only question was, "Do you have 100 customers?" then they could have sent and read that e-mail over breakfast.

Yeah, first "real" startup and we were absolutely desperate for some seed cash. Mistakes were made.

These days I have significantly higher self respect, always have multiple income and funding sources, and a lot more protective of my time.

For sure, hugely rude move by the VC. But unfortunately I’d just expect that from them.