I Became Friends With One of My Investors, and I Think it May Have Killed My Startup

Can entrepreneurs ever be friends with their investors?

Aaron Dinin, PhD
Entrepreneurship Handbook
5 min readJul 11, 2022

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The first “real investor” I ever convinced to fund one of my startups was a local angel. By “real investor” I mean he wasn’t a “friends and family” investor who knew me pre-startup and decided to invest because of our personal…

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I teach entrepreneurship at Duke. Software Engineer. PhD in English. I write about the mistakes entrepreneurs make since I’ve made plenty. More @ aarondinin.com