It's not weird at all. Brian talked to a ton of people over many months. He was raising many months before I met him. And then I came in. I then spent too long negotiating but then we finally worked out a deal end of Sep and then my lawyers and their lawyers negotiated the agreement Sep 26th and then we did our dinner. But then YC smartly moved in after this closing dinner and booted me out. Funny enough Justin Kan and I ended up in Vegas a few years later at a tech party at Caesars hotel and had a good laugh about it. He remembered me as the crazy Marine who was writing a huge check into Airbnb before they elbowed me out. This isn't unusual - they probably googled me at the time (back then all of the results would have been stories about iraq, Syria, afghanistan, Pakistan operations; black operations and crazy shit). They probably thought they were protecting Airbnb and keeping dumb money out of the cap table. It's quite common for good investors to strongly advise you not to take dumb money and I agree with the practice.

And that goes back to one of the lessons from my post. I realized that for founders and investors to take me seriously and not lose deals I had to prove myself, build a positive brand by helping founders and getting smarter about this new world I was operating in.