VC firms are... responsible for the full life cycle of a company: they find it, help it grow, open up a Rolodex, and sell it.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
Great VCs do everything they can to make you successful. But just like your bank, credit card company, mortgage holder, etc. they are not confused where their long-term loyalty lies.
We worked personally with a lot of great VCs. They just work incredibly hard at supporting entrepreneurs and their companies.
If you're an entrepreneur, and you have a choice to go to a place where there are 250 VC firms or somewhere else where there might be one or two, you're gonna go where all the money is.
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.
I hear so many startups talking about how they can raise VC instead of questioning whether they need it in the first place.
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.
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.
In the past, when venture-funded startups told their investors they'd found a profitable business model, the first thing VCs would do is to start looking for an 'operating exec' - usually an MBA who would act as the designated 'adult' and take over the transition from Search to Build.
Venture capital is unscalable. Production equals the time each partner has.
Understand that VCs are simply a sophisticated form of financial investors who, in turn, need to satisfy their own investors.