You can't have personal investors anymore because it's too expensive, so you have to have corporate investment or a lot of rich people.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Once investors come in, it's hardly your company anymore!
I'm primarily just an investor.
Every venture capitalist says at some point, 'I wish I could run this company myself' - to be the entrepreneur instead of the investor.
Even I have been at that point in my life where I thought I didn't have enough extra money laying around to start investing in stocks for my own retirement plans.
For a number of major companies, if you can't access the commercial markets, you can't fund your business. That's a big problem. You can't pay your bills.
In a globalized world, one application can spread like wildfire and there's only one winning company, which means you have to invest more than you've ever had.
My philosophy is that if I have any money I invest it in new ventures and not have it sitting around.
People in private equity complain that they have so much capital and so few places to invest. But you have lots of entrepreneurs trying to raise money at the low end and find that they can't get funding because of this mismatch. I think that there is an opportunity there.
I started Shutterstock without any outside funding; I believe in creating a lean startup. By not taking outside investors early, I was forced to use every dollar I had as efficiently as possible. And I was able to keep a large part of the company.
Because of the love affair between the American public and the stock market, it is possible for entrepreneurs, technological visionaries and inventors of every sort to get financing.