You are correct. He most likely would have gotten his money back, even without renewing the note, had he accepted a payment plan.
Instead, he chose to start a (very costly) legal fight.
So far he's probably out $100k+ in legal fees and looking to spend $100-200k more in the new personal lawsuit. The original note was for $250k. I don't think he's ever going to recover the full amount of money he's put into this (not to mention also his and everybody else's time as well as opportunity costs).
This actually seems to support the article’s thesis then: doing business with an asshole hurt you, but being an asshole didn’t help the asshole. It cost him money, attention, and precious irreplaceable time.
Exactly. The asshole hurt me, my cofounder, several people who lost their jobs, several people who lost their investments and many people who lost valuable time in their lives. It's unclear if it helped him in any way, maybe that's my problem and I don't understand the game he is playing.
It seems like the only ones that have benefited (because they got paid to put their time on this), are the lawyers involved, and the people running the courts.
Great question. We are still trying to figure that out.
We've consulted with multiple lawyers and therapists to try to fully understand the situation.
Two guesses so far:
1) When he "offered" to take over the company, he said he would fire me and keep my cofounder running sales. This whole ordeal also coincidentally started a couple of days after my cofounder said she would be stepping down as CEO (even though he had previously told her he would extend the note). We have the impression he wants to "own" my cofounder somehow (according to an expert in psychopaths that we consulted with, the investor fits the profile - my cofounder is also very pretty and she's had to deal with stalkers multiple times in the past)
2) After the conflict started, we found out this investor apparently had defrauded some people to fund his own company (he currently has open lawsuits about that). If this is true, he might be projecting, believing maybe we did the same to him (which we did not)
But those are just guesses. I wish he would just pick up the phone and we could talk to reach some sort of agreement to end this madness.
> 1) When he "offered" to take over the company, he said he would fire me and keep my cofounder running sales. This whole ordeal also coincidentally started a couple of days after my cofounder said she would be stepping down as CEO (even though he had previously told her he would extend the note). We have the impression he wants to "own" my cofounder somehow (according to an expert in psychopaths that we consulted with, the investor fits the profile - my cofounder is also very pretty and she's had to deal with stalkers multiple times in the past)
This sounds like the basis. The saying goes, "Hell hath no fury as a woman scorned," but let's not be sexist, it applies to men as well. And no less to men who had no pretense of legitimate courtship.
You might get over the legal case by showing it's a vexatious lawsuit, for instance by showing that the monetary motivation is not rational because he turned down offers that would have remedied his loss completely.
That the contract was cancelled because the product wasn't worth it?
That the note wasn't extended because he thought the company was a money sink which would not be profitable? That he thought trying to liquidate the good bits was a better way to get his money, rather than a payment plan from a value destroying enterprise?
That he sued personally because he felt they might be trying to hide assets of the firm?
I could be wrong, but there are other angles to see the picture from.
You would be stunned at how often the reasons for events like this are driven by simple narcissism and spite. That's not cynicism speaking, it's reality, and something well worth keeping in mind in any business endeavor.
It is possible, and I'm hoping that's the case (that it is not a personal issue).
Replied to another comment of yours with more detail on why it looks like a weird situation.
To add a bit more: our investors, the lawyers that we've worked with so far and even the bankruptcy trustee's team, have all been surprised by the way this guy has been handling the situation and seem to agree that it doesn't make sense to proceed that way in terms of getting a return on his money.
Instead, he chose to start a (very costly) legal fight.
So far he's probably out $100k+ in legal fees and looking to spend $100-200k more in the new personal lawsuit. The original note was for $250k. I don't think he's ever going to recover the full amount of money he's put into this (not to mention also his and everybody else's time as well as opportunity costs).