Founders: Beware the Kamikaze Round

Fujio Hayashi, a 22-year-old pilot in the Imperial Japanese Air Force, has volunteered for a mission of certain death: strap into a fighter plane loaded with 500 kilograms of explosives, fly to mainland China, and dive-bomb into the first enemy position he sees. Japan is experimenting with a new weapon of war: the Kamikaze, a suicidally effective means of knocking out enemy ships and bases used to terrifying effect in the Pacific theater of World War II. Hayashi is the very first Kamikaze. Sort of. He dutifully takes to the air, identifies a military installation, crashes into it — and survives. The bomb doesn’t go off, a technical malfunction common in beta-testing. He unstraps, gets back to base, survives the war, and lives until 93. His grandkids said he loved classical music and stray cats.¹ A warning for founders: You are probably not Hayashi. I regularly see startups chasing what I’ve come to call a “Kamikaze” funding round: an early, enormous check tagging the company with a val

Fujio Hayashi, a 22-year-old pilot in the Imperial Japanese Air Force, has volunteered for a mission of certain death: strap into a fighter plane loaded with 500 kilograms of explosives, fly to mainland China, and dive-bomb into the first enemy position he sees. Japan is experimenting with a new weapon of war: the Kamikaze, a suicidally effective means of knocking out enemy ships and bases used to terrifying effect in the Pacific theater of World War II. Hayashi is the very first Kamikaze. Sort of. He dutifully takes to the air, identifies a military installation, crashes into it — and survive