Another Golden Rule

I was involved in one of those informal, first-meet handshake, style introductions over a bottle of excellent red the other day with a chap that ran a firm specialising in writing business plans on behalf of prospective corporate funders.

He thought that there was an unhealthy attitude prevalent among the ‘angel’ community whereby they insisted on taking 70, even 80 percent of equity in new ventures. Their retort when challenged is often to shout out “I take the risk…” He considers such people “sharks”.

I asked him what he thought might be fairer and how that mentality could be re-aligned. His fence-sitting answer was understandable, given his political position, yet he did give an insight into how tricky an obstacle it can be.

One piece of advice was that if you’re in bed with someone who follows what he called the ‘golden rule’, then perhaps you should think twice:

The Golden Rule:
“He who holds the gold makes the rules”