This. It represents an extreme immaturity of VC thinking. VC money is made from aligning your returns with founder success and then convincing them to swing for the bleachers. Beating them down early and situating yourself across the table is counter to both VC and LP interests.

Also worth noting, VC reputations are made when the chips are down. Those reputations are sticky and don’t reset with market cycles. If you’re hard to work with in a down swing, you’re undesirable to work with in an upswing.

“Stick tight to co-investors” & “work together” = back channel to screw founders down harder than the market already is and bleed them of equity