Not Every Startup Should Be Venture Backed | by Sarah Guo | Medium

In this record fundraising year, (and despite the recent hiccups, record year in the public markets) we are beginning to see a lot of companies raise institutional venture capital simply because it’s widely available and the Silicon Valley bull market default. Many people feel they have to take venture capital, or they get pushed into it by investors looking for opportunities. This is bad. Out of the approximately half million businesses with employees that get started every year, only about a thousand are venture-backed. However, in the current environment we are conflating “technology startup” with “venture-backable.” Hanging out yesterday, a friend (in a leadership role at a startup) mentioned his Xoogler friends were hacking on something, and were probably going to raise money when they shouldn’t. Here’s a quick crack at that: Elon Musk put $100M of his own money into SpaceX before he raised $20M in “Series A” VC money from some of his former Paypal cofounders in 2008 (6 years of w

In this record fundraising year, (and despite the recent hiccups, record year in the public markets) we are beginning to see a lot of companies raise institutional venture capital simply because it’s widely available and the Silicon Valley bull market default. Many people feel they have to take venture capital, or they get pushed into it by investors looking for opportunities. This is bad. Out of the approximately half million businesses with employees that get started every year, only about a thousand are venture-backed. However, in the current environment we are conflating “technology startu