Well, you made a lot of assumptions here. For example that a COO from a good tech company in the US would come to a small EU country to save a failing startup.

Well, you made a lot of assumptions here. For example that a COO from a good tech company in the US would come to a small EU country to save a failing startup. Also, we needed some pretty specific knowledge to succeed and we did not even know we were missing it. Our company checks with people working in the org to see if we want to take money from particular investors. We have rejected investors in the past because the values of the investors were different from ours. We take money from investors that we can align on the mission. I mean, there are so many more criteria than money - values, mission, control of the company (are we free to run the company as we like?), preference treatment (how much preference you give VC's on their stock? How much are you willing to reduce the risk of the investor by taking their terms?). We used to value such things and we continue to do so. I'm happy we paid a premium and would do so again. I look at it the other way round - if you compromise on values / mission / control / other things that are important to you and people in the organisation - you can get more money. I mean, but how did we get into a hole if we took all this smart VC money? We followed some of their advice (as well as our own misguided ideas). If we failed back then, we would have been just another company "destroyed by smart VC's".