I'd counter that free tip with a dose of the real world. That less then $50,000 is rent and payroll. If I'm a software start-up with a < 10 person team and I'm

I'd counter that free tip with a dose of the real world. That less then $50,000 is rent and payroll. If I'm a software start-up with a < 10 person team and I'm six months into a six month development cycle, and oh shit we miscalculated the significance of feature X, which has now revealed itself to be our greatest value proposition and requires 2 months more development time to be fleshed out (mini-pivot I suppose) in order to be sold to customers.. I need that 10k, 20k, 50k just to push the product out the door. Sure I'm going to tell you all about our sales projections, remember when you asked to hear them in the meeting, and yes the projections will be optimistic (but still fundamentally sound). No I will not go into too much depth about all the reasons we pushed launch back two months (the meeting would go past the ~30 minutes allotted and you would likely feel bored towards the end of the meeting.. not good). I think both investors and founders are products of our current environment. We both ride the roller coaster, yet I feel like founders often get portrayed as the dishonest ones (I'm guessing it's because we don't hold the money). Maybe I would just like to feel more representation in this thread.