I completely agree. Silicon Valley talked about the reality.
I founded a startup and headed engineering for another. I have seen more than half the things there as follows:
Getting money in tranches.
Investors making you spend invested money for personal gain.
Having a business CEO who has no product insights.
Board control issues.
Employees trying to overthrow founders and getting fired because of that.
Being forced to hire friends and family of investors.
Lawyers represent the company and not you.
Founding company with someone whom you do not trust.
Investors getting involved in day to day running.
Luckily each of the startups had an happy ending. But it took a lot of hard work and a few miracles.
One more thing to add. Having a CEO who takes a salary of 180k/year after seed round (which was almost half of the seed round) and apart from this also charges part of his house rent to the company.
Those were fun times.
I founded a startup and headed engineering for another. I have seen more than half the things there as follows: Getting money in tranches. Investors making you spend invested money for personal gain. Having a business CEO who has no product insights. Board control issues. Employees trying to overthrow founders and getting fired because of that. Being forced to hire friends and family of investors. Lawyers represent the company and not you. Founding company with someone whom you do not trust. Investors getting involved in day to day running.
Luckily each of the startups had an happy ending. But it took a lot of hard work and a few miracles.