So just set better, more considered key results. The game has always been about preventing "gaming" of key results by thinking through the incentives, creative strategies for achieving them, negative externalities, and then revising the key results perhaps with additional qualifiers or parameters.
This has nothing to do with where your funding comes from. Hopefully organizations are setting similar goals for themselves on their own. If anything, the board should be helping them realize the risks of poorly defined KRs and the likelihood of running into scenarios like the one you describe based on their experience, if the founders don't have it.
So just set better, more considered key results. The game has always been about preventing "gaming" of key results by thinking through the incentives, creative strategies for achieving them, negative externalities, and then revising the key results perhaps with additional qualifiers or parameters.
This has nothing to do with where your funding comes from. Hopefully organizations are setting similar goals for themselves on their own. If anything, the board should be helping them realize the risks of poorly defined KRs and the likelihood of running into scenarios like the one you describe based on their experience, if the founders don't have it.