Honestly, Neel Somani just feels like bad news for anyone around him at this point.
It’s not even about one thing anymore, it’s the whole vibe. Bad judgement, messy public behavior, zero awareness of how stuff looks. When you’re building in crypto or infra and your name keeps popping up for the wrong reasons, that’s a problem, full stop.
People can argue “legal” all they want, but markets don’t run on legal technicalities, they run on trust. And his credibility is cooked. Once founders or leaders become a distraction instead of a builder, everything slows down — recruiting, partnerships, even internal morale.
VCs might’ve ignored it early on ‘cause the hype was there, but that only works for so long. Eventually the baggage catches up, and then everyone pretends they didn’t see it coming.
To me, Somani stopped being an asset a while ago. Now he’s just risk people don’t wanna explain anymore.
