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by ye-olde-sysrq
990 days ago
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VC can be a great way to break into markets that just have inherently large moats or barriers to entry. Stripe is an example: you can code all you like but you literally can't move money without going through a ton of very annoying (to devs, anyway) footwork to get cozy with the existing financial institutions. The connections your VCs give you can matter as much as the money. They can also literally kill your company. VCs have a very specific strategy: they give some money to 1000 companies knowing that 990 of them will return 0% in the hopes that of the remaining ten, 9 of them return %X000 and one returns %X0000. Given this, they are going to have very little interest in finding a company that will return even "good" results. They're going to push you to shoot for huge growth or die trying. And given the choice between "grow modestly and safely" and "grow faster but risk exploding" they will push you to pick the latter, because in their business model they can't even count low enough to measure returns that are just 10x. |
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+1 to this.
There are definitely different models for VCs, but in general, the big "brand name" VCs are in the unicorn business. This tweet [1] does a succinct job of explaining why.
The result of this is that as a founder, if you own 49% of your company and big-VC investors own 51% of your company and someone comes along offering to buy your company for $100m, your investors are likely to turn it down. For you, that would likely be a life-changing amount of money. For a big-name VC, it doesn't move the needle. In most cases, they'd rather roll the dice and end up with $0 then get their share of a $100m exit.
[1] https://twitter.com/jasonlk/status/1670021902612549632?ref_s...