I read your response, David. Frankly, I think you do many entrepreneurs an injustice in assuming that I'm talking about VC funded entrepreneurs only. At my talk at University of Chicago I repeated advice I give every time I speak "90+% of you should never raise VC. It's not right for you. Better that you raise smaller amounts of money and keep control of your business."
And many small startups have a much worse cash situation than those fueled by VC but your post fails to consider that. Many of them have loans, sibling / parent money and the like. It's actually much harder on them.
Or how about physical or retail businesses? I know many non-tech entrepreneurs who have gone through personal bankruptcy due to this. Including my own parents. Which led them to get divorced.
Fair point Mark, I do not know you. Even though my post may come across as aggressive, that wasn't my intent. I'm just getting started with blogging, and next time I'll have to be more careful with my language. Apologies.
I agree that VC funding is not the only path to stressful business, although it certainly helps a lot. In this sense, VC is a part of a larger problem - people's tendency to take on more risk than they should. I dare say that if more people lived and did business within their means, we'd all be calmer, have less bankruptcies, and maybe even less divorces.
It is very easy to read your post and come away with the feeling that being an entrepreneur is necessarily stressful, and that just isn't the case. It starts being stressful when you can't meet your obligations, and that mostly happens when your ability to meet your obligations is heavily dependent on circumstances you can't control - circumstances like relying on outside money.
Is VC better than loans from family? Most definitely, because by taking money from someone who fully appreciates their potential losses, everyone gets to be less emotional about the whole thing.
Still, I believe that by not taking any outside money, or extracting a heavy price from yourself, you get a shot at a significantly calmer variant of Entrepreneurship, and that's something people should know.
Mark, the method David says, purely bootstrapped, keep your day job until its profitable, no outside investors even family.... is the safer road and avoids many of the pitfalls you outline. Of course, you still have to worry about the market changing, losing a client, your cost structure vs your competitors, and the like. All the things that your current boss worries about, you get to inherit.
But also the VC, angel, or other investor method gives you cash up front to put off some worries on day 1, but as Mark says, when you hire someone, you have to look them in the face knowing you only have 6 months cash in the bank.
With the bootstrap method, you only have 1 week cash in the bank.
Both can be stressful. I guess having other people depending on you besides yourself is less stressful in some ways, but also less (0) chance of a home run exit.
@msuster I can understand how you found the title of the post disrespectful to you but I think he might have been going for the "Bitch Please" meme [1] rather than any actual intention to be disrespectful.
You're a well known and well respected entrepreneur turned VC (as opposed to VCs that have never seen the pain of being an entrepreneur themselves) so I doubt that anyone is going to take the "bitch please" part too seriously.
Ofcourse not being at the receiving end of that post maybe my perspective is different and I'd react similarly.
How could he not think you're talking about VC funded entrepreneurs only. Some selections:
"we have closed $150 million in our 4th fund...now you know why I’ve had many nights away, many airports and much time on the road."
"Raise money. Need money. More money. Yes, please give me money. "
"I mean you never know if your investors are REALLY going to keep backing you. "
"If I told my VCs would they then lose interest in our next round? "
Your slides are from Seedcon which is all about VC.
Almost nothing about making money from paying customers. Almost no worry about if customers are really going to keep backing you, or keep interested. Almost entirely about keeping VCs happy.
I will have to agree with you (Mark) on this one. I was at the the U of C talk and you repeated that line multiple times. I don't know what the OP would assume you were only talking about VC's only. Apparently he doesn't like people giving honest advice!
And many small startups have a much worse cash situation than those fueled by VC but your post fails to consider that. Many of them have loans, sibling / parent money and the like. It's actually much harder on them.
Or how about physical or retail businesses? I know many non-tech entrepreneurs who have gone through personal bankruptcy due to this. Including my own parents. Which led them to get divorced.
Bitch, you don't know me. Don't assume you do.