Browder: VCs make fake customer promises to trick founders into signing SAFEs
Josh Browder · Turning Peter Thiel's $100K into $10M Angel Portfolio & Why VCs Can Be Sharks | Josh Browder · 20VC with Harry Stebbings · May 18, 2026 · at 58:03
Josh Browder, founder of DoNotPay and angel investor at Browder Capital, warns young founders about manipulative tactics used by venture capitalists during investment negotiations.
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“The VCs will say anything to get you to sign right there and then. Anything. They'll say, I, they, so they'll reverse engineer what the founder is looking for and say, oh, I'm friends. I'm buddies with that guy. I know someone at that company with golf buddies. I can get him to be a customer. Like right now I can introduce you to so many customers. And they just say exactly what the founders want to hear. And these poor young founders, they're so impressionable. Sometimes they sign the safe on the spot. And afterwards, of course, it never materializes. They never get that, ah, customer that they were wanting because it turns out they weren't as close golf buddies as the person made it out.”
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