> So many people are straight assholes in business. Especially the more you climb the ladder. As my bootstrapped business reached $3M ARR, a wave of no-name investors approached us. Some of the term sheets more than insulted me. They sought to take control of the company without any payout for the co-founders or employees. They just wanted to capitalize a company they'd now own.
> I don't understand why.
(Warning: Probably unpopular opinion for capitalistic mind sets following)
Well, big surprise, because they got corrupted (ethically) by their money and greed, or that is the way they got a hold of it in the first place. They got some, so they want more. Money buys almost anything in capitalistic society after all. They see a chance to take advantage of a fellow human being, a chance to profit! They do not care about the human in your business. They care about ways they could profit from it. You are only a means of increasing their capital. The higher the amount of money investors have, the more likely, that they got it through ethically questionable means, because that is, where the big money is made.
There might be ethical investors out there too. Haven't knowingly met any such yet, might have unknowingly met some. It is probably also quite difficult to keep a clean sheet through all the complexity of today's financial world.
(perspective change from having a company which others want to invest in, to investments being done by people)
There is a difference between working for a wage and using money to "magically" create more money, fueling turbo capitalism. In many cases that difference is an ethical one: What investments does one make? Can one be sure, that those investments are not actually investments, which flow directly or indirectly into production of weapons, climate destroying big companies, pesticide producing giants, who are responsible for decimating bee populations and starvation in third world countries? Anyone "investing" should really think hard about it and be on the lookout for superficially nice investments, which are actually indirectly quite unethical.
Now I will admit, that there are probably still many ways to make ethical investments. Of course there are. It's just that those are not yielding the highest returns. You could invest in social projects, in green energy/technology, in research for many good things. You can even donate to a good cause (like protection of rain forest) and thereby make an investment into all our future.
Most people, who "invest" in something however, are almost completely after the returns those things yield and do not give a damn about the ethical aspect of that investment. They do not give a thought about indirectly investing in some huge company, which takes part in producing weapons or building the next big coal mine (thinking of a recent example).
Lets take a look at for example DAX (German stock index). Anyone investing in any "financial product" that invests into the top n DAX companies. There we have BASF and Bayer, responsible for producing, selling and lobbying for pesticide usage and killing natural diversity and species, starvation of people in India and forcing farmers to use genetically modified seeds, in the name of profit. We have BMW and Daimler, where at least to my knowledge Daimler is part of the diesel scandal, making people believe their cars were cleaner than they really are, indirectly guilty of dealing huge damage to our environment and health. We have Deutsche Bank and Telekom there as well. Telekom just sucks for being a monopoly (at least was) and keeping technology way behind in Germany. Deutsche bank does not have a good name, when we talk about ethics, although I do not personally know exactly what they did. Probably investments in weapons and stuff like that. And wasn't Adidas connected to child labour in third world countries?
So basically anyone investing in DAX as such invests in these at least partly evil players, knowingly or unknowingly. But people are being scared by people working in banks and other places, who tell them that, if they do not invest into something with more risk, they will not be able to take advantage of those precious percentages at the stock market and then those scared people stop thinking and become investors. Notice also how usually the people, who are consulting you at banks and insurances try to steer you into the direction of stock market backed investments. Usually they will make other options simply look worth, simply based on percentages. That is often, because when you invest into such products of theirs, their company gets more flexibility of investment itself and can do more unethical investments, yielding higher returns for them.
In my opinion anyone investing into anything has a responsibility. That responsibility is not to increase their own riches, but to look out (not only superficially) for any ethically questionable consequences of their investment and even the responsibility to try to make the world a better place with their investment.