we need to combine individual experiences and create a curated tabular list of investors classified by different dimensions in pg's great article. such a list combined with this article would be the ultimate cheatsheet for fundraising.
The main problem with such a list is that the experience with an investor is very subjective and you need to get a lot more information about the said situation in order to assess what really happened there.
I imagine people will likely contribute to such a list only if they are anonymous (The bay area is very small and you don't want to upset investors).
It kind of reminds me of thefunded.com where I find little value in the reviews since I have no idea who's behind it and what was the situation that led the entrepreneurs to leave that review.
Where can it be very valuable? When you have a small network of peers who trust each other (an accelerator for example) and are willing to share more details on the interaction with the investor (and could possibly take a call if needed).
I also believe that YC has a secret list of all of the investors with some comments from the staff (I also know that startups are asked to give some feedback on interaction with investors - that list is probably a curation of the feedback given).
When dealing with an investor I always ask them to provide me with 2 references: 1 entrepreneur they backed who is doing well and 1 entrepreneur who is not doing so well (that helps me understand if the investor is helpful when things are not going so well and believe me there will be some point when things will be a train wreck).
Additionally I always end up pinging my network and doing some backchannel references on the investors knowing that the references they are providing me are probably curated.
That is an excellent idea and barring a pile of non-disclosure agreements I could see a lot of people contributing to this.
Deal details with investor names attached are not likely to materialize until long after the fact and even then someone is breaking a promise, which professionals with ties to VCs are not going to do. Founders could technically get away with this, especially if a deal fell through but this world operates largely on reputation and such a thing could easily pop up at a moment when you really don't need it later on.
Crunchbase has quite a wealth of info in it, as does duedil.com , those you could use to get an idea of who is on the other side of the table as well as google. The best source of info for a company looking for funding from 'party x' is to go and find out who else 'party x' has invested in and then to see if there are connections that can be sounded out off the record as well as companies that 'party x' was going to invest in but where the deal fell through (this is a lot harder to come by though).
You should absolutely do this, always speak to founders of companies who've raised money from a given investor before taking money from them. You can also ask investors about other investors (as in "have you co-invested with X before, would you ?").
