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Fundraising & Equity

Protecting Your Startup from Strategic Investors

Written by Harry Prabandham

Curated by Rubric Financial

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Strategic Investors Play a Different Game

  • Corporate investors have strategic goals, not financial ones. Your success is nice, but their success is required
  • If competing with you helps them, they will. Corporate VCs have shared confidential details with competitors, killing major deals
  • Strategic investors aren't VCs; they're corporations with business units that may one day build exactly what you're building
  • Your information asymmetry is your only advantage, so guard it

About the author

Harry Prabandham

Founder & CEO

Founder and CEO of StartupCFO. MBA from Wharton, MS in Computer Science, and decades of experience building and advising venture-backed startups.

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