>> what's the surprise? Sounds like a normal startup work.
The surprise is the asymmetrical expectations.
I would not expect a paycheck from the new company during the in-between-jobs vacation time (which I pre-arranged before accepting the new position).
I would expect them to think that such an "ask" is outrageous bordering on insane.
And then there is the normalization of wage-theft through manipulation.
To clarify my position: while this may represent a type of startup work that is very commonplace there is nothing at all normal about it -- it is just a clever form of stealing.
Everything is an odyssey these days.
"oh, they asked me to work before the agreement time", "they work during the weekend", what's the surprise? Sounds like a normal startup work.
VCs most of the time have no clue what they are doing but will behave as if they had built Meta or Google.