[polote]

VC give pretty bad advice in general. Their advice is the the description of founders they want to invest in. Most of the founders they give money to, more or less follow the advice they give (not directly, but because they have been selected like that). But as all vc most of their companies fails, showing that the advice in fact doesn't work.

Don't forget that if they really knew what to do to start a successful company they wouldn't be investors but founders

[cowpig]

I think that a lot of advice from VCs is bad, but only because a risk profile that makes sense for an individual VC investment is completely reckless for that individual.

Assuming utility grows linearly with wealth (which it doesn't: a $100M exit is not going to improve your life 20x more than a $5M exit, which makes this worse), the kelly criterion[1] puts the amount of your personal resources you should optimally invest into something that has a small chance at mooning very low. Which is what the VC is doing. But the founder is not.

But ok I'm on a tangent and I think I disagree with your post otherwise.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelly_criterion

[jnovek]

“Don't forget that if they really knew what to do to start a successful company they wouldn't be investors but founders”

I can’t stand this philosophy, e.g. “those who can’t do teach” kind of stuff.

Perhaps VCs prefer their job to being a founder?

Not everyone who is _capable_ of being a founder _wants to_ be a founder. It’s exhausting work that takes all of your time.

[polote]

My point is that only a handful of people have been able to create several successful companies. Because we don't know how to create such company, so most advice in that case are wrong

[jacobr1]

And plenty of VCs are former founders.

[Rapzid]

And they, of course, know it's a numbers game. Why suffer all the failure and risk never having another hit when you can let others do it for you?