look who’s selling their TV
http://tinyurl.com/6×65fv

I suspect at the end of the day it was just a tough choice between liquidation to return cash (something the VCs probably have a right to do), or restructure.

& we’ll tend to skim over the article to just get the names we need to follow. if even that. we’ll just as likely go elsewhere.

this was a great article and really kept my attention from start to finish. i haven’t done that in months here.

need more of these — and the excellent Swisscom article yesterday (though some thought it was about LeWeb).

Nice. More!

You guys know where we can find more VC inside stories & goodies?

We need VC’s to scale but we really don’t need to be abused by them either.

probably any company losing a lot of $$ + raising a round right now is prime for this sort of thing..

Just as a quick comparison: DivX networks made 14 million distributing the Yahoo toolbar in the first nine months of 08 alone, according to SEC filings. Of course that deal just fell apart, ending in a lawsuit and a bunch of lay-offs, but that’s a different story.

Why would you agree to a rescindable deal? Yes, I know, “you had to,” because you’re investors, who probably called themselves your “partners” when they were wooing you, saw your weakness and forced you into the bathroom stall, bent you over, and showed you who they really were.

Why did your lawyer not demand whatever clause let this happen be removed, even if you had to trade something for that to happen? Because they are conflicted too. You can bring them one deal, but the VC can bring them many. Who do they want to please? Right.

Yes, I’m over-simplifying, exaggerating, and possibly mischaracterizing, but this story is yet another lesson for entrepreneurs, yet another reason why you should bootstrap if you can. Otherwise, most of the time, you’re just asking to be taken advantage of.

Sure, sometimes you get some benefit from taking VC money before you have revenue and positive margins, just like sometimes you get some benefit (at least it looks that way for a while) from taking the devil’s money. In the end, though, most of the time, you will get screwed (sometimes justifiably so, maybe, such as if it was your own greed that drove you to the deal). Why? I leave you with my favorite version of a famous fable:

Once upon a time, a woman was picking up firewood. She came upon a poisonous snake frozen in the snow. She took the snake home and nursed it back to health. One day the snake bit her on the cheek. As she lay dying, she asked the snake, “Why have you done this to me?” And the snake answered, “Look, bitch, you knew I was a snake.” -NBK