It’s surprising that companies have their employees do all kinds of background checks (criminal and otherwise), but VC’s deploying millions of capital dont do the same.
Maybe no skin in the game skin they’re just investing LP money? Strange either way.
To be fair, I am in Europe, and background checks are rather the exception than the norm here. In fact there are only very few jobs where companies are allowed to run background checks.
This includes: Banking, security, teaching and government jobs.
After reading about Kim Dotcom and seeing how he had a glorious lifestyle with his "investors's" money and avoided jail, and even ended up an Internet folk hero after the MAFIAA used law enforcement to harass him, I sometimes wonder if it's not easier to be a criminal..
As an example, I worked (as a third party) for a bank once.
The way the system here in Switzerland works is thus:
The government has an office which supplies a certificate that says "this person has not had criminal charges pressed against them for the crimes X, Y and Z for the last N years".
A bank can demand (and did, in my case) this certificate from new employees for crimes like Fraud and violent crimes (I assume).
The job candidate requests the certificate from the government and hands a copy over to the company. Obviously if they know they would fail, they don't have to do this part, and can simply stop pursuing the job instead.
IIRC (this wasn't relevant for me), a company weren't allowed to simply ask for a wildcard certificate, it had to be reasonable for the job.
Maybe no skin in the game skin they’re just investing LP money? Strange either way.