Everything depends on your situation, but in general VCs are influenced by social proof and need a forcing function to make them make a decision. So an acquisi

Everything depends on your situation, but in general VCs are influenced by social proof and need a forcing function to make them make a decision. So an acquisition offer can be both of these things in the right circumstances. The problem with this line of thinking is that if you are getting either serious acquisition offers or serious VC interest, then your company is probably doing very well and you don't really need to sweat it. But... if you would rather raise VC funding and for whatever reason you are only getting serious acquisition interest, you should probably talk to VCs right away and mention it.