Over a couple of blog posts and a series of Tweets an ad agency founder made it clear that VC Sunil Paul doesn’t understand contracts or worse, doesn’t respect them.
In a blog post Mason Pelt of Push ROI, explained the exact timeline where Sunil Paul’s venture Spring Free EV (he’s the CEO, not just an investor), negotiated, signed and breached a contract. The post summarized here, details several bad faith actions taken after the contract breach as well.
On Twitter Pelt made it clear that he doesn’t care if other companies won’t work with him because of this, Tweeting that he’s “saying this publicly because other service providers deserve the heads up.”
Pelt also took Spring Free EV’s CEO to task for the use of the Getaround logo on his bio. Paul uses the Getaround logo on his Spring Free EV bio, and talks about incubating them on his Spring Ventures (his VC firm) bio. However, press representatives for Getaround stated Paul was never involved with the company — and in Paul’s own words (archive link)
“In the summer of 2009, I taught at Singularity University and helped incubate a company to create peer-to-peer carsharing, Getaround. At the end of the summer I offered to invest in the nascent team and join as an executive chairman, but they turned me down, concerned I would exert too much control over their company. Annoyed at being rebuffed, I decided to experiment with P2P carsharing myself. A key obstacle was insurance. Personal insurance didn’t cover renting out your car to someone else and an insurance company could cancel your insurance if you did so.”
As Pelt put it on Twitter, the logo is used on “Sunil Paul’s about page despite his involvement seeming to have been, meeting with them at some type of startup incubator, and having them refuse to take his investment dollars or grant him a board seat.”