On the blocking point, one of the meetings I had with a startup founder led to a discussion about investors who exhibit poor behavior. The person I was talking to brought up the fact that they have blocked at least a few deals for a VC who lied to them about a conflict of interest. I've seen this happen a few times and with particularly interesting companies. What is not captured here is how often this happens and what sort of tangible impact it has on investor deal flow in the future - and I'm not sure there's currently a way to measure that, though AngelList reviews are one attempt that could begin to tie this all together.
In terms of founders swaying deals, I can personally attest to this one, in the positive sense. An incredible investor of ours asked for help talking to a founder to explain why the founder should take our investor's money versus someone else. I was very honest with the entrepreneur and told them everything about this investor, and of course there was way more good here and the founder took that investor's capital. Well, I've seen the opposite happen as well - founders can sway other founders to not take capital.
It's interesting to see the above play out multiple times, rather than as one-off things. I know that a few initiatives over at AngelList could bring transparency to this offline trend and we'll see if they can figure out an elegant, enduring way to quantify both blocking and tipping of deals at scale. But until then, founders will always be talking with one another behind the scenes and I'm hoping high quality founders can help one another out even more. The positive byproducts of this will be increased investor accountability as well as the sharing and blending of "institutional" knowledge between startup founders. Both are very good things.
