Title: Our 11 person startup had an expression of interest from quite a reputable VC and we had few months of communication regarding growth, revenues etc.<p>Finally the VC agreed to invest he wanted to do due-diligence by going through the customer&#x27;s list rather than checking our business bank accounts. I was a bit hesitant but wanted the funding to go through, to take my mind off it and focus on the startup.<p>I sent the list of customers, their contact details and the revenues from each of them and the investor just vanished after that.<p>I know PG said that in silicon valley a verbal commitment is as good as a deal. This VC gave us verbal and email commitment and then vanished without the common courtesy of explaining why.<p>There has been no response to my multiple emails or phone calls. The VC is very well known and not a flyby shop.<p>The main issue is that the investor already has a startup in his cohort that is in the same space as us. Few months later my customers started receiving emails from this other startup.<p>I have no idea how to ask this VC , who has infinitely more money and power than our startup, to destroy all of our data and not use it in any way whatsoever.<p>I don&#x27;t want the funding and I don&#x27;t want to burn the bridges but I want to protect our customer data.
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