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Guidelines for Glasswall reviews

Glasswall crowdsources anonymous reviews about VCs, allowing founders to speak out without reprisal.

Although Tech in Asia does not moderate reviews except in extreme cases, we’re outlining what we believe makes for high-quality reviews.

We trust our readers and community to apply their own judgement when reading reviews, and also rely on them to help us keep the reviews constructive.

What we want reviews to be

Each review should strive for these values:

  • Constructive: Comments should tackle behavior that can be addressed.
  • Factual: Feedback should be rooted in actual events.
  • Honest: Reviews should convey what founders really think.
  • Tactful: Feedback should be delivered with care and respect.

Each review should cover the following:

  • The fundraising process: The reviewer must have been raising funds with the VC in question.
  • The VC’s behavior as a shareholder: The VC must be a shareholder of the reviewer’s company.

What we discourage

1. Comments on anything unrelated to Glasswall’s scope

  • Doesn’t talk about an investor during a fundraising process or performance as a shareholder
  • Irrelevant product or service recommendations, advertisements, product or job referral links

2. False claims

Examples:

  • Calling out someone non-existent at the firm
  • Someone provides direct proof that disproves a review
  • Impersonating another to leave a review

3. Name-calling and vulgarity

Examples:

  • “John Lee is a tool.”
  • “Tone down your dickishness.”
  • “Remove your crazy CEO!”
  • Other insults and slurs

What we condemn

1. Harmful comments

  • Attacks on a person’s race, ethnicity, nationality, sexual orientation, gender, religion, age, or disability
  • Violations of privacy, such as sharing of residential addresses or other private information.
  • Violent threats or incitements to violence

2. Fake reviews

  • VCs leaving fake positive reviews about their own firms
  • VCs leaving fake negative reviews about other VCs

How reviews are moderated

  • Technical filter: Tech in Asia has a system that detects and flags problematic reviews for human moderation. We will optimize the algorithm as we go along.
  • Manual removal: Comments that are harmful will be reviewed and removed by our team. However, we do not edit comments.

Examples of high-quality reviews

A high-quality review doesn’t have to be as long as an essay. Apart from brevity, here are some attributes of a good review:

  • It’s rooted in personal experiences with the investor.
  • It elaborates on why the feedback was given.
  • It has details that set one VC apart from others.

Below are some examples, sorted by question. Names were redacted.

Please describe your experience of raising money from this investor, whether positive or negative, and share your insights.

  • The info exchange was fast, and they were clear about what they liked and were concerned about. We dived deep into the area of concerns, sent more info, and eventually, we were rejected. The whole process took a few weeks. It’s better to get a clear no, and ____ gave us very good feedback on his thoughts. We may disagree, but he was honest and helpful, and we greatly respect that.
  • They do two rounds of interviews. One by a more junior person and final round by the GP. Junior person is a bit clueless. Senior person is better. Interviews are followed by a list of questions. Overall quite structured and take about two months for us. They told us the decision over a call and not over email which was nice.
  • They’re highly data-driven VC. They reached out because they recognized our strong performance via their tracking platform. We were surprised, took the call, but decided not to take external funding. They were respectful of our decision.
  • ____ is very logical and mostly cares about revenue and EBITDA. He wants to see that you have a clear path to profitability even before profit was cool. A lot of his portfolio is B2B and he has a keen interest in startups helping old industries to innovate.
  • We’ve been through at least a hundred fundraise discussions at different levels, ____ teams fundraise process was respectful yet thorough. They were well coordinated between analysts and partners on the information gathered, with little to no overlap of questions and data requests. I thought that their DD into founders was much more thorough than other firms, it included reference calls to a few provided contacts, and I found that they contact other peers/managers that weren’t listed. As a founder, if this bothers you, probably need to keep in mind. For us, this meant more time investment as founders, but it also gave us more time to understand the main partner that would lead the deal and be the point of contact for us.
  • This firm is unprofessional and condescending in their interactions. They will spend ample amounts of time taking your month by month performance information all to ghost you in the end.
  • Some coaches were very rude and condescending – talking to the participants like they were children. At times would even bicker with each other. Content of the program was like business 101 – did not really prepare us for start-up pre-seed stage. Program fee was unnecessarily high. The entrepass and allowance were great perks though.
  • Met the Managing Partner, ____, at an event, explained our business model. He drew out the entire model on a whiteboard and showed where there was potential breakage all within 15min. Then he sent his analyst, ____, to do DD and wrapped up the investment within 4 weeks. Post investment, they exercised pro-rata and continuously introduces us to more potential clients. Have them in your corner.
  • ____ and ____ are top of their field. Highly networked, connected and respectful. Took time to understand my business model, flew to one of our operating markets for DD and went above and beyond on their support and investment. Initially offered me $500K, ended up offering ~$4.5M. Their DD included calling my ex-investors, my ex-colleagues and my long lost friends, so be prepared for a comprehensive DD. Scott and Jan, the owners of CMT, are amazing. Ex-founders, went through ups and downs together and understands the struggle of entrepreneurship.

Any suggestions on how this investor can improve its fundraising process or as a shareholder?

  • Be more mindful and respectful to people you speak with. You guys have limited operational experience, maybe learn to listen. Don’t talk over people incessantly, don’t leave the table in the middle of people answering YOUR questions. Don’t hand us over to your employees like we are afterthoughts. We have better things to do as well, but we took the time to come to the meeting. Maybe respect that.
  • Hire more founders/operators who can relate better with founders and give more actionable advice. The fund engages with too many none-founders, esp when the leaders are already non-operators
  • There’s room for enhancement in how swiftly they manage decisions that fall into a grey area, especially when the Investment Committee (IC) does not reach a unanimous consensus on proceeding with a deal. In the fast-paced environment of venture capital, making prompt decisions is crucial, even though it’s challenging to please all parties. Implementing a structured decision-making process, such as voting, could be beneficial. While many VC firms, including ____, have protocols in place for such scenarios, there’s always potential for further refinement in handling these situations more effectively.

Any advice for founders who are raising money from this investor?

  • Be direct and concise (reverse pyramid) in your answers. Be honest and frank about your shortcomings and your ignorance; provide a path to find answers to questions/hypotheses/assumptions.
  • They have recently launched a climate tech fund, so any founders who are into sustainability, please reach out to them. Regardless of your geography, Investible is also open to other sectors too and has a very differentiated way of evaluating founders using quantitative profiling frameworks.
  • The team does not like to rely on pitching from a deck in the interview rounds – be prepared to have a conversation about your business and don’t depend too much on having a pitch deck.
    The entire firm and founder community feels designed to be as accessible and earnestly helpful as possible to (affiliated and unaffiliated) founders. Reach out to any team member, partner, or portfolio company — and chances are that they will respond directly. They also encourage repeat applications and even give a slight edge (for grittiness) for founders that were previously rejected and try again with more progress.
  • Engage with caution. If they extend a term sheet, do not accept a no-shop clause. Their strategy is to extend a term sheet as fast as possible, but then pull it last minute after 2 months with a no-shop.

How has this shareholder affected your company either positively or negatively? Please share your observations and insights.

  • During boom times, they shouted about growth at all costs. When times are bad, they dial back and nitpick on past decisions. They were calling about profitability, and the downturn was good for business. They changed their tone quickly and acted like they believed in profitability all along. The change is needed…. though their words and actions caused operators a lot of unnecessary stress. A lot of businesses are built during good times. It takes time to pivot and it’s not like you can change a company with hundreds of employees overnight.
  • Not great, after one year, difficult to find time with the investor, especially when you are not in the best top 5% of his portfolio. Difficult to get ____ to help with the next round, at least that was our experience. Maybe we were written off earlier.
  • Neutral. We are not the top perform portco so it’s understandable why we aren’t getting the attention. It’s good enough that he leave us alone to keep trying.

Examples of low-quality reviews

On the flipside, here are some attributes of low-quality reviews:

  • Feedback can be applied to any VC
  • Vague – doesn’t go into specifics
  • What’s being said is unclear
  • Unconstructive and not actionable
  • Based on hearsay

Below are some examples, sorted by question. Names were redacted.

Please describe your experience of raising money from this investor, whether positive or negative, and share your insights.

  • We approached them and had initial discussions. Had a chat with ____. Managing partner but doesn’t seem like the brightest bulb, he might have some skeletons in his closet somewhere. Yet he’s very charismatic. He also took the call while he on the road, camera off walking around on the street, which I found disrespectful.
  • If you ask 10 founders about this fund, 9 out of 10 will give the same feedback. It is not worth your time and energy.
  • As with any VC, take their feedback with a grain of salt
  • Had a look with them a few years ago to invest into a SG JV to produce plant based alternatives and also lab grown meat – we walked away from it while the JV raised money from other investors who bought the story and financial projections. Fast forward to today the JV has closed down.

Any suggestions on how this investor can improve its fundraising process or as a shareholder?

  • Get ride of ____ and ____, waste of time.
  • Why so many foreigners in the team when you are an Asian VC?

Any advice for founders who are raising money from this investor?

  • They have good reputation because of their investment in ____ but heard stories that they haven’t been helpful to founders when they are in trouble.
  • ____ is looking for founders who are visionaries looking to disrupt the status quo.
  • Large market is important for it to be interesting for them.
  • Some partners are good and some are pretty bad. The experience varies depending on which partner you are interacting with.
  • Come prepared to answer why your business will work.
  • Integrity is key – do not try to “fake it till you make it.”

How has this shareholder affeced your company, either positively or negatively? Please share your observations and insights.

  • Generally supportive of startups/ecosystem