The VC Business Model and Why VCs Invest | cyclic.sh
The majority of the confusion or difficulty I had raising Venture Capital was that I didn’t fully understand the VC business model. I didn’t understand the individual investors and their incentives. I didn’t appreciate the incentives for the fund itself. Nor did I understand what the fund’s investors (Limited Partners aka LPs) were expecting. Hopefully this will help you understand what I didn’t.
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I've bootstrapped Jotform to 15 million users. Bootstrappers like me believe that entrepreneurs should have one goal: making their businesses work. What does that mean? It’s simple. You need to earn more money than you spend. In other words, you have to be profitable. Media outlets often celebrate companies that raise millions of dollars and have huge vanity metrics, like user acquisitions. There’s a myth that you can worry about being profitable later. Jason Fried and DHH explain this beautifully in their now-iconic book, Rework. The Basecamp founders target startups in general, but I think bootstrapped startups are the exception to the fairytale world where “the laws of business physics don’t apply." Clearly, there are exceptions. Capital-intensive startups, such as building an online marketplace or opening a physical restaurant or retail store could require funding. Business is never one-size-fits-all. In the world of startups, there is and should always be room for VCs. But my advice? Ignore the unicorns and glittery startup tales and do it your own way. Make sure you’re profitable from the start — even if those profits are modest at the beginning :)
VCs and venture money are means towards an end, not an end itself.
VCs invest to make money.
They aren't interested in helping people, society, or the world. Their function is to generate a return for LPs. Nothing necessarily wrong with that ... except for the outsized role they play in shaping the startup world. They're glorified even when they enable fraud and abuse (wework and uber).
I think we're starting to see this shift. People are realizing that they don't necessarily need or want to become the next unicorn.
And I agree with @aytekin: "Ignore the unicorns and glittery startup tales and do it your own way. Make sure you’re profitable from the start — even if those profits are modest at the beginning"
Let's face it: Venture Capitalists have insane amounts of cash, and if they don't invest it, it's going to become impacted by inflation. These days, you need assets in order to beat inflation, and VC's purchase equity in technology companies in the hopes these companies will take off and their equity will appreciate.
They don't need to hit a home run often, so they have lots of money to play around with (or else they lose the money anyways to inflation).
This means a lot of horrible companies receive money that otherwise wouldn't, due to an ocean of cash sweeping them away. If it wasn't for the current economic climate of 0% interest, lots of technology companies wouldn't receive funding, because money wouldn't be free to play around with.