[il]

I doubt a business going from 0 to $20M in <5 years while paying out millions in dividends along the way is common anywhere. You have to remember that for investors it's all about IRR. That kind of IRR on the 1 out of 10 investments that gets to that level isn't interesting to any real investor. Your focus on profit and dividends is misguided. Taking money out of a company in its early stages is a suboptimal strategy for value creation.

I rewrote my comment several times to make it less rude, but your advice is completely wrong and I hope nobody seeking investment follows it.

[rdl]

Is IRR really the thing VCs are trying to optimize? Since they're once and done with the money, and have limited bandwidth (board seat capacity), I think total returns are their goal -- they'd rather have their $500mm fund make $2b investing 100% vs. have their $500mm fund invest only $250mm total in its lifetime and make $1.5b.

[il]

I was thinking about angels in this case.