[codemac]

In many cases "raise less money" is actually "hire less people".

When seeing it as a "we hired too quickly", I see the same problem in failed, pivoted, and successful startups. It is your basic mythical man month problem, and most if not all VCs encourage this management mistake.

[ska]

The "hire fewer people" can often be restated as "have fewer projects". One real problem with raising too much money early can be making it too easy to say yes to ideas. That, coupled with a focus on time-to-market that overbalances validation can yield you a lot of half finished products that were never likely to work.

[usrusr]

I believe that the entire idea of accumulating runway from raising money is mostly a fallacy: VC expect money to be used for finding victory (and a bigger one, while you're at it), not for postponing defeat. All of that nice money is earmarked for doing things that you didn't did before, not for filing existing holes.

Staying within the aviation metaphor you get a longer runway, but also a heavier plane with many more seats. You'll better not have oversold on the capabilities of your engines.