B2B founders lose 2 weeks of momentum when a VC partner goes on vacation mid-diligence and the deal goes cold internally

A B2B founder is in active diligence with a Tier 1 fund — they've had the partner meeting, the associate has requested customer references, and the data room is open. Then the sponsoring partner goes on a two-week family vacation in August. So what? The associate continues collecting diligence materials but has no authority to advance the deal to investment committee. So what? By the time the partner returns, they have 200+ unread emails and 3 new inbound deals competing for their attention, so the founder's deal is no longer top-of-mind. So what? The partner asks for a 'refresh call' to get re-engaged, which effectively resets the process by one stage. So what? The founder's other term sheet from a smaller fund has an expiration date, and they're now forced to either accept the inferior offer or gamble on the Tier 1 fund re-engaging. So what? If they let the smaller term sheet expire and the Tier 1 partner ultimately passes after the refresh, the founder has zero offers and must restart the entire fundraise from scratch, having lost 6 weeks total. This problem persists structurally because VC partnership structures have no formal handoff process for active deals when a partner is out, associates are incentivized to avoid pushing deals forward without their sponsoring partner (it's career-risky to champion a deal that the partner hasn't fully bought into), and there is no industry norm for pausing term sheet clocks during diligence delays.