So, venture capital is usually used to accelerate growth at an early stage company which works out pretty well for all involved parties: Entrepreneurs get to bu

So, venture capital is usually used to accelerate growth at an early stage company which works out pretty well for all involved parties: Entrepreneurs get to build big businesses, VCs enable that and make money off the management fees and LPs benefit by having a well-performing asset class in their portfolio. The point where goals start diverging is when the VC wants to see rapid growth and a quick sale (say, 4 years into the company timeline). Fred says: So when an investment is not working, you are faced with walking away, shutting the company down, or making an additional investment. I wonder if there is a fourth way, where the company trims itself because it isn't making much revenue (maybe because it's too early to a market that is nascent, or organic growth is much slower than expected but is still there) but keeps going instead of shutting down or trying to accelerate the growth process by raising more capital. Is it fundamentally hard for VCs to say, we're going to support this company for as long as they want (with connections and a bit of capital) and wait for an eventual exit, if they trimmed down and burned very little capital? Why would you not want to keep going if you were more or less promised an eventual exit/return and it didn't require a lot of capital? Why the focus on "quick" exits and not building big sustainable businesses? Is this something that comes down from their relationships with the LPs?