UK Needs An Acquisition Culture To Have a Sustainable Startup Culture

Re:UK Needs An Acquisition Culture To Have a Sustainable Sta... by pg on Monday July 08, 2013 @02:07PM (#6008142)

That is a common misconception, but it's usually founders who are eager to sell, not VCs. There is a power law distribution of outcomes in startups. The big successes are so big that that's where all the returns are for investors.

VCs routinely reject startups because they worry that the founders are only interested in selling the company. We tell founders who are about to present to VCs never even to use the word "exit."

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Re:UK Needs An Acquisition Culture To Have a Sustainable Sta... by anovikov on Saturday July 13, 2013 @05:31AM (#6037122)

I think in part this is because the founders reach the point where they feel it's 'enough' way before VCs do, because VCs are risk hungry (distributing their risk across dozens of deals makes that easy) and want to roll the dice again and again. In the end, i believe that timeline of the VC's fund existence preclude them from meeting their return goals otherwise than through exits.

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