> Give each startup $120k and ask them to pay back 5X that once they become profitable. The devil is going to be in the details of what "profitable" means. If

> Give each startup $120k and ask them to pay back 5X that once they become profitable. The devil is going to be in the details of what "profitable" means. If the company just keeps hiring people and growing, are they profitable, or not? You also have to remember that this idea would be competing with bank loans, so you would have to be willing to take significantly more risk than a bank does to ask for get 5X returns. Speaking of which, "5X" returns may sound great, but the timeline for those is somewhat important too. 5X in 3 years is very different to 5X in 20 years. Maybe it's just me, but I wouldn't take this deal. I'm not super interested in VC unicorn money, but as someone in tech, it's really not hard to pull 120k together. And if I thought it was just going to be "profitable", I wouldn't want to be in a position where I am being asked to pay back 600k, since that is a serious drag on my own earnings. So it just seems to be a really weird niche, where I would think my plan has a high chance of failing (otherwise I wouldn't take 120k, since that's very little money), but I also don't think it's going to have huge returns, which means I would be badly aligned with traditional VCs, but I'm also willing to pay back 600k.