Er. He may be talking about diseconomies of scale (it's harder to get a high return invest $1 billion than investing $1 million), which would be nothing new. Or

Er. He may be talking about diseconomies of scale (it's harder to get a high return invest $1 billion than investing $1 million), which would be nothing new. Or he's claiming absolutely lower returns (earning $5 million on a $10 million investment versus earning $2 million on a $20 million investment), in which case he's almost always wrong. There are a small number of cases where a startup would have lasted longer if they'd raised less -- but there's still a pretty strong correlation between having lots of capital and getting a high absolute return.