Insight certainty 3/5 debate potential 3/5

Gascoigne: Startup boards usually flip to investor control by Series B

Joel Gascoigne · 20VC: Buffer's Joel Gascoigne on The Moment The Founder Is No Longer The Boss, The Questions Founders Must Ask Their VCs and Why We Need A Spectrum of Different Financing Mechanisms Other Than VC · Mar 29, 2019 · at 7:08

Joel Gascoigne, co-founder and CEO of Buffer, discusses how fundraising causes founders to lose control of their companies without realizing it.

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“And I think at some point along the way, maybe it's series A, series B, the board usually flips over to be controlled by investors.”

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More from Joel Gascoigne

Disclosure
Buffer gave no board seats to investors in seed or Series A
“So both rounds, we didn't bring any investors on the board.”
Joel Gascoigne Mar 29, 2019 ▶ 10:18 20VC: Buffer's Joel Gascoigne on The Moment The Founder Is No Longer The Boss, The Questions Founders Must Ask Their VCs and Why We Need A Spectrum of Different Financing Mechanisms Other Than VC
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Gascoigne: VC incentives drive overfunding startups to see what happens
“The way the VCs are set up generally is structured towards basically triggering an environment where it is almost better if they can pump up these startups, put a lot of money into them, and just kind of see what happens, see if it works, and 90% of the time i…”
Joel Gascoigne Mar 29, 2019 ▶ 11:00 20VC: Buffer's Joel Gascoigne on The Moment The Founder Is No Longer The Boss, The Questions Founders Must Ask Their VCs and Why We Need A Spectrum of Different Financing Mechanisms Other Than VC
Insight
Gascoigne: VC forces startups into a rollercoaster of 100% annual growth
“For the longest time, the only option has been VC. And then the only option is that you lock yourself into this white knuckle ride rollercoaster and that the outcome has to be this a hundred percent year over year growth for the longest time. And I think there…”
Joel Gascoigne Mar 29, 2019 ▶ 13:08 20VC: Buffer's Joel Gascoigne on The Moment The Founder Is No Longer The Boss, The Questions Founders Must Ask Their VCs and Why We Need A Spectrum of Different Financing Mechanisms Other Than VC
Insight
Gascoigne: Withholding financial details from employees treats them like children
“I think sometimes as leaders, we almost treat our team as children or something, you know, that they can't handle those details or that truth Or something. And I think that's just really a disservice to everyone that you've brought on board. Like everyone is a…”
Joel Gascoigne Mar 29, 2019 ▶ 25:22 20VC: Buffer's Joel Gascoigne on The Moment The Founder Is No Longer The Boss, The Questions Founders Must Ask Their VCs and Why We Need A Spectrum of Different Financing Mechanisms Other Than VC
Disclosure
Buffer uses profit sharing to help buy out short-term investors
“We've been doing profit sharing for two years in a row now, and we want to keep going more in those directions and helping investors get liquidity when they're more interested in kind of a short-term horizon so that we can become more self-owned over time and …”
Joel Gascoigne Mar 29, 2019 ▶ 29:07 20VC: Buffer's Joel Gascoigne on The Moment The Founder Is No Longer The Boss, The Questions Founders Must Ask Their VCs and Why We Need A Spectrum of Different Financing Mechanisms Other Than VC
Insight
Gascoigne: Buffer's founding insight was preset daily social media schedules
“I started to schedule using TweetDeck and Hootsuite at the time, but you had to choose a very specific date and time every time you were scheduling something. And all I really cared about was spacing out the tweets there. So that was the aha moment was, oh, I …”
Joel Gascoigne Mar 29, 2019 ▶ 5:42 20VC: Buffer's Joel Gascoigne on The Moment The Founder Is No Longer The Boss, The Questions Founders Must Ask Their VCs and Why We Need A Spectrum of Different Financing Mechanisms Other Than VC
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