Tech Founders Air Their Worst VC Pitch Horror Stories
Travis Kalanick, Mark Pincus, and Cloudflare's CEO go public with brutal tales of pitching venture capitalists.
Some of tech's biggest names are swapping war stories about the worst moments they've endured while begging VCs for money. Travis Kalanick, Mark Pincus, and several other prominent founders have opened up about their most painful fundraising experiences.
The standout moment: Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince publicly called out Vinod Khosla by name. That's a bold move — directly naming one of Silicon Valley's most powerful venture capitalists in a negative light.
Pitching investors is a near-universal rite of passage for tech founders. Apparently, so is accumulating horror stories along the way. The revelations highlight the power imbalance that still defines the founder-VC relationship, even for entrepreneurs who eventually built billion-dollar companies.
The stories were shared in a TechCrunch feature by Julie Bort, pulling back the curtain on a process most founders only discuss privately.