Lemkin: Jailing Fraudulent Founders Is the Best Startup Governance Control
Jason Lemkin · OpenAI’s $10BN Secondary Sale, Ramp Hits $1BN ARR & Brex Hits $700M · 20VC with Harry Stebbings · Sep 11, 2025 · at 1:27:13
Jason Lemkin, founder of SaaStr and SaaS investor, discusses the lack of due diligence in fast-moving VC rounds and argues for harsher legal consequences for dishonest founders.
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“I think the best control today would be if more founders that committed fraud went to jail. I just think if every month someone went to jail that completely lied, I know Roy disagrees, completely lied in a round, sent financials where they aggregated all their year's revenue in one month, where they pretended unpaid pilots were pilots. If a couple of these went to jail every month, I think it would have the proper chilling effect and mitigate the rampant fraud we're seeing today.”
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