Mercedes Bent, a partner at Lightspeed, says the venture market is shifting from founder-friendly terms toward fiduciary duty. She warns of zombie companies: well-funded startups with no real revenue growth or product-market fit that will struggle to raise again.
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You've been thinking a lot about like in this market, founder-friendly terms versus fiduciary duty. So I'd love to hear more if you can expand on that.
And yeah, I've been thinking about this a lot because, you know, there you've probably heard the term zombie companies. And I think a lot of us after the 2021 years have these companies that are really well-funded, have a lot of cash, and could kind of keep going for a really long time. But there isn't necessarily like a lot of progress on like the revenue front. Like, could they raise another venture round? Like, not with the current metrics. And there— and some of them, have they even found like product-market fit? Like, not necessarily. And so for me, I've been thinking a lot about, you know, people are sometimes, you know, I've had even investors say to me like, the next few years are going to be like A total reversal from what all investors were taught the last 10 years, which was like, you gotta be super family friendly.