Zullo: VC board governance degraded into 'patty cake' over founder NPS scores
Rick Zullo · Jason Lemkin & Rick Zullo: How "Mark to Market" Corrupted Venture Capital | E1052 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings · Aug 23, 2023 · at 13:12
Rick Zullo, General Partner at Equal Ventures, discusses how venture capitalists stopped challenging founders during the recent bull market to preserve high founder Net Promoter Scores for future fundraises.
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“We really moved away from that over the course of the last five, 10 years, because, like, just like you were talking about, like, there's a lot of incentive to sell sell a founder, a lot of incentive to be all about the NPS score, and everyone's trying to, you know, raise funds every 12 months, so they need, you know, those founder references when, I don't know, the best relationships I have with my founders, like, you know, you can go to bat, you can fight and, you know, get back to the table the next day, because, there's trust there, but, That really moved away where it became a lot of kind of patty cake and, you know, how can we, you know, you never vote against the founder and you never kind of push back on the founder.”
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