Quote

There's nothing wrong with raising venture capital. Many lean startups are ambitious and are able to deploy large amounts of capital. What differentiates them is their disciplined approach to determining when to spend money: after the fundamental elements of the business model have been empirically validated.

I would say raising capital is one of the weakest things for most entrepreneurs.

Venture capital is about capturing the value between the startup phase and the public company phase.

Too many startups get in the habit of continually raising more and more money, which has the deleterious effect of both pushing out profitability and limiting your exit options. The less rounds of capital you need to raise, the more of your company you get to own.

Finance is critical. If sufficient investment is made in infrastructure and venture capital is made available, there will be a big improvement in the situation.

The best early-stage venture capital investments appear obvious in retrospect; however, very few of them are actually obvious when you make them.

If your business had no risk, you could go get a bank loan and call it a day. VCs like risks - without them, venture capital wouldn't exist. But they need to be risks that VCs are good at assessing and managing.

One of the biggest mistakes entrepreneurs make is not understanding the relationship they have with their investors. At times, they confuse VCs with their friends.

There are lots of ways to make money in venture capital, and there are even more ways to be mediocre. The industry has too much money and too many smart people chasing too few great entrepreneurs.

At the end of the day, VCs have to provide their limited partners with great returns, or they aren't going to be able to raise another fund.