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I can see a certain appeal to a VC over an angel. There are a lot of pieces that a company that is growing quickly needs to take care of, and most engineers don

I can see a certain appeal to a VC over an angel. There are a lot of pieces that a company that is growing quickly needs to take care of, and most engineers don't have the expertise to do so. If a business explodes and suddenly finds itself in need of legal, accounting, marketing, and HR departments, how is one of the guys still hacking on the project going to put all that together? I suppose if he's motivated a smart guy could make it happen, but I think most engineers would want somebody to handle all that so they could keep hacking. At the same time, I don't want to deal with anything described in that essay. If I can find it, I'll take the angel funding until I absolutely cannot continue without professional help and my angel can't provide it.

NSX2 19y ago
Don't fall for this trick! Just because you have no idea how to do those things, don't fall into the trap of assuming that a V.C. does know how to do them / is willing to roll up his sleeves and do the hard work. Most VCs, despite constant blogging of how many hours they work, are actually quite lazy and allergic to work. Actually, though they'll never tell you, and often say the opposite on their websites, VCs view big time involvement in your day to day business as a sign of trouble - ideally they want to sit on their rear ends, visit you once a month and tell you to "optimize the radical paradigm shift" then go home and write a blog about their value added and entrepreneurs should be grateful they have VCs telling them how to do such things. When they actually do have to get involved, they'll do so as the article suggests and "punish you" by shoving "their team" in your startup with a "see what you made me do? See what happens when you make me break a sweat?" attitude. IN CONCLUSION: Just because you don't know it, doesn't mean you should assume that some smug, confident-looking guy sitting across the table from you (the VC) DOES know how to do it. For all you know he might be as clueless as you. There was an awesome article on this subject from about 10 years ago called something like, "The pussification of silicon valley"

NSX2 19y ago

Don't fall for this trick! Just because you have no idea how to do those things, don't fall into the trap of assuming that a V.C. does know how to do them / is willing to roll up his sleeves and do the hard work. Most VCs, despite constant blogging of how many hours they work, are actually quite lazy and allergic to work. Actually, though they'll never tell you, and often say the opposite on their websites, VCs view big time involvement in your day to day business as a sign of trouble - ideally they want to sit on their rear ends, visit you once a month and tell you to "optimize the radical paradigm shift" then go home and write a blog about their value added and entrepreneurs should be grateful they have VCs telling them how to do such things. When they actually do have to get involved, they'll do so as the article suggests and "punish you" by shoving "their team" in your startup with a "see what you made me do? See what happens when you make me break a sweat?" attitude. IN CONCLUSION: Just because you don't know it, doesn't mean you should assume that some smug, confident-looking guy sitting across the table from you (the VC) DOES know how to do it. For all you know he might be as clueless as you. There was an awesome article on this subject from about 10 years ago called something like, "The pussification of silicon valley"