Raising money is "just the beginning" for a company but for many people, including most founders and early employees who raise the funding, it's really the begi

Raising money is "just the beginning" for a company but for many people, including most founders and early employees who raise the funding, it's really the beginning of the end. With funding comes outside pressure from investors that seeps into and permeates the entire venture. The pressure to show rapid growth, alone, changes what kind of people get hired, how their responsibilities are structured, and how they interact with the pre-funding team. Founders will be pushed out or replaced by career executives from the industry, early employees will be managed out or grow bored with the monotony of an established business, and anyone involved in raising the initial rounds will likely be way out of their depth by the time growth stage funding rolls around. Let's face it, we monkeys like shiny trophies for well quantified metrics to put on our wall and taking credit for a bunch of zeroes on a check is a lot more practical than for the sum of all of the work and value added by a company that survives for years or decades after you leave it.