Re:Startups Rejecting Venture Capital
by smartplaya2001 on Friday January 11, 2019 @11:18AM
(#18884500)
interesting we decided to bootstrap in 2016. Chasing down VC's is such a time drain when you can focus on your product.
we now have about 28k users.
Re:Startups Rejecting Venture Capital
by paulcnichols on Friday January 11, 2019 @11:25AM
(#18884561)
Good for you! Doesn’t seem like a hard fork in the road though. You could probably raise a round much easier on way better terms now that you’ve proved the business. Maybe you’ll hit a point where the infusion of money really would make a difference.
Yes, this is a strong point. VC money saves time but then getting VC money takes time.
Well, that's kinda expected isn't it? Also keeping in mind that essentially 9/10 startups fail, VC's are well aware of that and basically treat you that way. Welcome to the lions den!
Why would they care about you or your team? It is an investment, not a social service.
Re:Startups Rejecting Venture Capital
by nathan_long on Friday January 11, 2019 @11:57AM
(#18884819)
Business partners are not family, sure.
On the other hand, you could easily argue that almost everything is "just business". The doctor is there to treat you, not care about you, your boss is there to extract labor from you, not care about you, your child's teacher is there to impart knowledge, not care about her.
Such black-and-white separation of concerns doesn't really fit well with being human, IMO. In most of these cases we want something less than intimacy but more than indifference.
A company is composed of people, redo the math.
What exactly does "cut-throat" behavior entail in this case?
Regardless, my short summary is that VCs, in my experience, are the worst of people who don't give a shit about you or your team, and just want to see more and more money. I don't want to deal with or be involved with people like that.
Edit: Also I should note, many of our VCs pitched themselves as 'angel' and 'impact' investors. So, while I didn't expect them to just hand us free money, I also didn't expect quite the level of cut-throat behavior we've seen.