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When you think about the qualities that every successful startup must have, you’re likely to think about having a great team, a great CEO, grit, an exploding market, a great culture, and a friendly competitor. There’s a lot to choose from.
But there’s one quality that you absolutely, positively have to have. Can you guess what it is?
Every successful startup has supportive investors. Every. Single. One.
If you have ever lived through having unsupportive investors, then you know just how disruptive an unsupportive investor can be. An unsupportive investor can literally kill your startup. And, the frustrating thing about dealing with an unsupportive investor is that, until they stand down, you can’t go forward with an unsupportive investor.
That’s what I lived through. One of our investors, “Donald Ventures”, blocked every term sheet we received. They literally wanted to force us to shut down.
It wasn’t until we asked Silicon Valley Bank, whom we had a loan with, to help us that Donald Ventures stepped back and allowed us to close our funding.
