Protecting Your Startup from Strategic Investors
Written by Harry Prabandham
Curated by Rubric Financial
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Strategic Investors Play a Different Game
- Corporate investors have strategic goals, not financial ones. Your success is nice, but their success is required
- If competing with you helps them, they will. Corporate VCs have shared confidential details with competitors, killing major deals
- Strategic investors aren't VCs; they're corporations with business units that may one day build exactly what you're building
- Your information asymmetry is your only advantage, so guard it
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About the author
Harry PrabandhamFounder & CEO
Founder and CEO of StartupCFO. MBA from Wharton, MS in Computer Science, and decades of experience building and advising venture-backed startups.
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