One Loose Cannon and Three Wood Ducks

In 2005, two co-founders and their advisor were preparing for a decisive investor meeting. The investors were well-capitalised, having launched and exited a major Australian car rental company, while the advisor had previously built a widely used travel and tour platform.

Before the final meeting, the less experienced co-founder unexpectedly suggested revealing more about the team’s identity and intentions. The advisor immediately rejected the idea, labelling the suggestion as reckless, and characterised the outspoken co-founder’s behavior as a strategic liability, suggesting he would frighten off the investors and calling him a “loose cannon.” The second co-founder reinforced the criticism, repeating the label. The co-founder who received the label withdrew from shaping the proposal and did not attend the investor meeting.

A deal was closed at a valuation exceeding $1 million, but the founders accepted terms that left them with 49% collective ownership, while 51% transferred to investors. The founders later reported facing persistent pressure from investors, including dismissive language about their negotiation performance, labelling the cofounders “wood ducks”. A second investment round occurred without the withdrawn co-founder, and within two years, the founding team had exited the cap table entirely, losing everything.

If the founding team had in place the SpatzAI toolkit, it could have altered the sequence entirely. The moment the rude labelling of the cofounder was introduced, he could have activated the Spatz protocol, cautioning the advisor and other founder, requiring acknowledgement of the rude delivery, not necessarily the content. Once resolved, they could have actually investigated the outspoken co-founder’s motive, and realised the state of their apparent desperation, and not being conducive to the negotiation process. The intervention could have focused on restoring the messaging first, and then allowing strategic discussions to continue without identity-based dismissal.

The failure point in 2005 was not the disagreement of the message from a concerned, outspoken cofounder, but the absence of a system to address the delivery of his message and the rude rebuttal of the advisor and the other founder. A message that obviously needed to be investigated further and resolved before any meeting with the investors. SpatzAI exists to provide that system at the moment behavioral framing occurs, capturing context, escalation path, and resolution transparently, creating fairer teamwork and reusable learning data. This is a true story and was one of the inspirations for the development of SpatzAI..