Know Your VC is now RateMyInvestor!
The RateMyInvestor team and I could not be more excited to welcome the Know Your VC community. We know how important Know Your VC’s mission has been to all of you and understand the tremendous value that this platform has provided over the past year. We know because we have been simultaneously creating and engineering RateMyInvestor under the same vision. Fortunately, an opportunity arose for RateMyInvestor to acquire Know Your VC. If you were an existing Know Your VC community member, what does this acquisition change for you? Nothing besides being one step closer to cultivating transparency in the venture world. Both companies share the same vision, so in joining forces, our destination is not changing, only the rate at which we get there.
RateMyInvestor is comprised of serial entrepreneurs and seasoned advisors with a deep understanding and network in the startup ecosystem. While spending the past two years building relationships with numerous VC and Angel groups, we have experienced these issues firsthand. Additionally, founder of Know Your VC, Anthony Zhang, is sticking close by as our Chief Growth Officer.
So how did we get here?
Let’s rewind a bit.
Years ago, I walked away from one of our many investor pitches:
Hook, line, and sinker!
We got em’.
Or really…
They got us. They understood our vision and bought in!
Either way, my team and I believed we were well on our way to marrying our vision with the investor that would help us bring it to life. We had found a VC.
Month one, they insisted we work with an outside firm to get our financials in order, which cost us a pretty penny. We did it.
Month two, they required us to lock down partnerships. Many contracts and countless weeks later, we did it.
Three months, blood, sweat, and tears later, they disappeared entirely. Wouldn’t return phone calls or emails. No goodbye or explanation. They ghosted us. Frustrated beyond measure, we returned to our incubator and wandered across the hall to kick-start a brainstorming session with a few fellow entrepreneurs. Before I could even finish my story about the VC that just burned us, one of the guys cut me off.
“Same thing happened to us with those guys!”
“What? The same VC?”
“Yeah, same guys.”
“Wow. Unbelievable. You sure it was the same guys?”
“Absolutely.”
“Wish we could have known.”
Had we been exposed to this flake of gold, just ten seconds of insight, three months prior, we could have saved so much time, energy, and resources. We could have been further along with a different investor. We could have made a more informed decision.
Knowledge is most certainly power.
And good decisions come from good information.
If only there was a Yelp for investors…
RateMyInvestor was born.
One year later, it’s the summer of 2017 and Anthony Zhang’s news feed is refreshing with more details from sexual harassment hitting Silicon Valley. High-profile investors resigned from notable investment firms such as 500 Startups and Binary Capital.
There are a million ways to name the situation, to sum it up — embarrassing, infuriating, unprofessional, unacceptable, unproductive. But the word that rings through Anthony’s mind the loudest?
Shocking.
Anthony understood the challenges of starting a business from his own first-hand experience. First, the idea hits. Then, there are the details of executing — assembling team members with the necessary skill-sets. Putting it all together is a grind in and of itself, and when the next obstacle of acquiring capital comes, it’s time to throw together a beautiful pitch deck, something to show investors exactly what you intend to do with your company, prove why it matters, and drive home the potential impact your company could bring to the world.
But, here comes the curveball.
Throughout his hundred or so investor meetings it took to raise funding for his first company, EnvoyNow, he had witnessed his share of the occasional no-shows, hubris, and bad actors of Silicon Valley. But when news broke that so many founders had experienced discrimination and sexual harassment at the hands of revered, top-tier VCs, it became clear to him that the lack of transparency and accountability in the venture world had gone too far. He searched for a platform where founders could feel comfortable and safe when sharing their experiences with investors, both good and bad.
Anthony knew these weren’t the only types of distractions to unfold behind closed doors, but surely it was one of the more severe ones.
There had to be a better way.
A way to cut the nonsense and stick to the point — merging capital with vision.
Accountability was missing from this world of venture capitalism.
Transparency too.
Know Your VC was born.
And here we are. With RateMyInvestor’s acquisition of Know Your VC, we are thrilled to unite and once again welcome and integrate its existing community to share and build upon our vision of cultivating transparency in the world of venture capital.
Cheers!
Austin Stofer
Co-Founder, RateMyInvestor
