Naval's VC Revenge
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A story about how Naval Ravikant turned a negative experience with VCs into successful ventures.
"Naval's now this wise sage billionaire type of dude, but he was an angry vengeful guy when he started Epinions back in the day. The VCs kicked him out of the company. Epinions ended up going public during the dot-com boom or had a big exit, but he got nothing - he got screwed by his own VCs.
He ends up suing them. In Silicon Valley, founders are typically very afraid to fight back against VCs, but he publicly sues his own investors. He then creates Venture Hacks, a blog dedicated to helping founders not get screwed by VCs. He said, 'I didn't know how to read these term sheets and I didn't know what these contracts meant. They kept telling me the dangerous words - oh don't worry, it's all standard.' He realized there's nothing more dangerous than when a lawyer or VC tells you 'this is standard, don't worry about it.'
This led to AngelList, which basically took the power away from the VCs and gave it to angel investors and founders. It created a marketplace with more transparency, more liquidity, and more competition. AngelList became a multibillion-dollar company."
Shaan Puri
Host of MFM
Shaan Puri is the Chairman and Co-Founder of The Milk Road. He previously worked at Twitch as a Senior Director of Product, Mobile Gaming, and Emerging Markets. He also attended Duke University.