> Proton VPN was briefly sharing employees with Tesonet during initial app bringup

I assume they needed the experience in how to run a VPN company, so that initial partnership was needed.

But why would tesonet spend resources to help a competitor to start? I'd be surprised if there wasn't at least an equity deal.

> But why would tesonet spend resources to help a competitor to start?

I thought tesonet is venture / seed fund?

Then the question becomes why would they help a company that competes with their portfolio companies. And even stronger case that they got some shares in return.

One reason is that helping contributors that you know will survive (as proton was already well known) grows the market. Basically give the competitor of piece of the cake because they will enlarge the cake for everyone.