Would you get a money from a VC/angel who tweets bad things about your religion?

Who cares if they are just mocking or making a light fun of religion&#x2F;s. All religions have caused a lot of pain around the world; now it is time for religions to be mocked. Unless they are hateful, take the money.<p>And no smart VC will ever fund founders just because of ethnicity. If they do, you probably don&#x27;t want to deal with them anyways.

IMHO, no, I won&#x27;t take the money, not because I&#x27;m religious person or something. I expect the person, whom I work with, at-least respect others.<p>As far as I&#x27;m concerned, funding is not just one way evaluation - where VC&#x2F;Angel decide&#x2F;determines whether to fund a startup or not based on founder&#x27;s characters and technical&#x2F;business abilities.The startup founder also needs to decide whether they think this money is legal or what&#x27;s the background of this VC&#x2F;angel who wants to invest.<p>Also note, taking stand like this might impact your business too! For example, what will do if you came to know customer is saying bad thing about religion ? Do you still want to take money from them?

If you have a potential investor that did that, I would politely let him know your religion, and ask him if that&#x27;s going to be a problem. Better than having support withdrawn later.

If you refuse to take money from people who have said stupid things or things you disagree with, you&#x27;d better be planning on bootstrapping. ;)

No. Its a simple matter of respect.<p>You can clearly see this individual disrespect a group you identify with.<p>Regardless of the type of group. You can&#x27;t have that around.<p>I&#x27;ve not witnessed ethnic bias in my investor dealings. I&#x27;d like to think its all about the Benjamin&#x27;s.<p>The alternative is to own your product, build what your customers will pay for. Good, respectful investors will find you &amp; you can pick from them.

It depends on the context. If someone is openly hostile in a public setting, then no. They&#x27;re probably an asshole.<p>If they mock religion in private, or on Facebook or some other stupid thing, whatever. A lot of people have negative feelings about some religions or political groups, but most of us manage to be polite and professional when we go outside.

I have my religious beliefs, but even if a VC&#x2F;investor was harshly critical of them, I wouldn&#x27;t refuse their money on that basis alone. Assuming they are professional and capable of keeping business and personal matters distinct, it should not matter even if they think my religious beliefs are totally crazy and say so publicly. The only things that should matter would be - how much money are they bringing to the table, and how much influence&#x2F;control over the venture do they expect in exchange, and how will they exercise that influence&#x2F;control in practice.

You switch from &quot;religion&quot; in your title to &quot;ethnicity&quot; in the body. Other than a few spelling errors (no big problem) we have basically nothing to judge your character by, though many people around here know a lot about VC&#x27;s&#x2F;angels. We simply can&#x27;t tell you how you will do.<p>If I were a VC and you wrote me the above email I would probably respond &quot;I love disruption in everything, it&#x27;s basically my job; it&#x27;s hard to disrupt the status quo while holding utmost respect for traditions that go back millennia. as such if this bothers you I may not be a fit. On the other hand, you can believe whatever you want! I would question whether you would be as open-minded as my other founders, if you are dogmatic about your core beliefs - but this will not influence in any way my decision to invest - just prove that you are innovative in business.&quot; Then I would look at the email for a few seconds, and delete it rather than send it. Because I can&#x27;t risk getting into some huge argument over this - being accused of being bigoted, being sued, etc. Plus, who introduced you? If you were introduced to me it would be a different matter.<p>so, that is how filtering works in the VC world, I think. Please note that I&#x27;m not a VC and this is speculation.

It depends on what &quot;bad things&quot; are.<p>I&#x27;m not religious myself, but I think there&#x27;s a clear cut difference between criticizing or scrutinizing an idea (the religion to which you subscribe – or political ideology, for that matter), and &quot;otherizing&quot; its subscribers by way of negative generalizations.<p>That being said, I agree with others in this thread: People that are unabashedly rude in public might not be the kind of person you&#x27;d want to have to deal with on a regular basis.

This is not at all an easy question to answer. For me, it would depend on whether I felt the degree to which they were being disrespectful of something core to my identity made things simply not viable. If it doesn&#x27;t go that far, then working with them may be a means to improve the image your faith has in the eyes of others.<p>I leave you with the story of Hattie McDaniels, a black american actress who played the maid in a lot of movies at a time when playing the maid was the only role she was likely to get. She was widely criticized by black americans for taking that role. She rebutted those criticisms with a statement to the effect of &quot;I can <i>play</i> a maid for $700 per week or I can <i>be</i> a maid for $7 per week.&quot;<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.m.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Hattie_McDaniel" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.m.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Hattie_McDaniel</a><p>In short: If you think the money is something you can get and their attitude is not so problematic as to guarantee that it will help destroy your business, I would take the money. If it is such that they will give bad advice, sabotage your business, etc, then walk away.<p>It&#x27;s a judgement call.

Religion&#x2F;believes although important should not be mixed with business otherwise it creates tension and breeds hatred. An example is what happened in KY with that woman clerk.<p>So if a VC&#x2F;Angel tweets bad things about your religion then you should seek alternative funding for whatever you are doing. Because it will never work even if you pretend those bad tweets didn&#x27;t matter.

I would feel comfortable giving one warning (in person). I&#x27;d explain what I saw&#x2F;heard, I&#x27;d explain how I felt about it, and I&#x27;d leave it in their court to change their behavior.<p>If they took it as a learning experience and showed a genuine interest in changing, I&#x27;d still be comfortable working with them. If they continued being disrespectful, I&#x27;d have to part ways with them.<p>I always like to give people a chance to redeem themselves; I&#x27;m sure I&#x27;ve said stupid things that offended others in the past, and I&#x27;m grateful for the opportunities I&#x27;ve had to learn and grow. Nobody&#x27;s perfect, we&#x27;re all human.

I don&#x27;t want to see the details, but this is a case where I think the details matter. Attacking the <i>beliefs</i> of a religion is not productive and indicates a problem for me. Attacking a religion based on human rights issues or political positions is completely different.<p>For example someone could tweet bad things about the gay rights position of my own religion, and I would consider that to be a good thing.

YES! I would ABSOLUTELY take the money!!!<p>And why should YOU do the same? Two reasons:<p>(1) In 20 years, EVERYBODY will make fun of your religion. (And for good reason.) And finally, (2) In 20 years, you&#x27;ll be rich, and you won&#x27;t care about what anyone thinks.<p>So if I were you, I&#x27;d take that money.

No. It&#x27;s not really a good sign if the VC doesn&#x27;t have respect for other peoples religions. Even if the region in question is a bit out there for whatever country, its nice to be nice. Jerks aren&#x27;t good business partners.

YC won&#x27;t force you to take any money. You could definitely decline any VC you want. But if their tweets are not above a certain threshold of hatefulness then do expect others to be wary of investing in you too.

Because of the character limit I wrote religion to end of question. Please interprete it as religion&#x2F;beliefs or anything which describes what makes you you. Did anybody had a similar experience?

You have to get over the fact that not everyone is going to agree with your religion or beliefs. You have to get over the facts that laws are passed and Supreme Court decisions are made that conflict with your religious beliefs.<p>In fact you might have found yourself doing the same to someone of different beliefs or religion or even atheists.<p>But because of diversity you have to work with people with different religion, beliefs, atheism, whatever and you can&#x27;t force your religion and beliefs on them.<p>Christianity has been spoken out against because of the beliefs on marriage, abortion, etc. You see all kinds of activists attack Christianity because it doesn&#x27;t believe in abortions, same sex marriage, etc in general, and while there are some versions of Christianity that do believe in those things, social media and news media attacks Christians based on the views of the Fundamentalists.<p>If we learned from Brandon Eich and Mozilla, his Christian beliefs to fight gay marriage by donating to a charity for Proposition 8 is what had caused him to resign due to bad PR when his name was released as donating money to it. Laws can quickly change, society can quickly change, you have to think ahead and think how what you do and say will be viewed in the future when things change. You can&#x27;t always have your way and you have to work with people who don&#x27;t like your religion but like your product and work ethic.<p>In IT I learned that having a thin skin and letting things get to you is not the right way to handle things professionally. You will have others attack you because of your religion or beliefs, and you have to work with them. A simple question like are you putting up a Christmas tree will tell them that you are a Christian, and then that is where the rants against Christianity come in, and you have to take it without fighting back and develop a thick skin because you need to get along with people who hold different views and beliefs than you do, and work as a team. You will find that many people are abusive to IT staff when their computer develops a problem and will use swear words and verbally abuse you until it is fixed. In IT one has to develop a thick skin and not let this abuse get to them.<p>I couldn&#x27;t handle the abuse and got stressed out because I couldn&#x27;t manage stress and got sick. I was often attacked because of my religion, even people taking the Lord&#x27;s name in vain to try and trigger me, making all kinds of degrading comments about Jesus, and all I did was turn the other cheek, and not fight back. If I fought back, I&#x27;d be sure to be fired and written up. If I reported them, well management was on their side anyway, and I&#x27;d be in trouble.<p>I don&#x27;t push my religion or beliefs on others, and I try not to do the same to them that they do to me, I follow the law and keep my mouth shut unless it is about business or IT. I believe in turning the other cheek on issues like this as Jesus taught.

Well, you could take the money then behead him!<p>(no of course not, but what is he saying, it might have some validity.. &quot;bad things&quot; is subjective you know? Ask him about it!)

Pecunia non olet.

What about YC?