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F*ck Your Value-Add - by Brian Sugar - AirSugar

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Those six words from an investor's mouth have sunk more founder relationships than any down round ever could. Yet they're uttered in boardrooms daily by VCs who can't resist playing marketer, growth hacker, and CEO all at once. There's a phrase that's quietly rotting the venture capital ecosystem from the inside: "We're a value-add fund." You hear it in every pitch meeting. See it on websites. Read it in partner manifestos. We help with growth. With hiring. With go-to-market. With brand strategy. With fundraising. With pricing. With retention. With performance marketing. With whatever nightmare keeps you up at night, we've got a guy. At first glance, it sounds generous. Strategic. Founders light up. Decks get tailored. LPs nod approvingly. But peel back the veneer, and what looked like support begins to resemble confusion. Somewhere along the way, venture capital forgot its job. VCs stopped thinking like coaches and started acting like players. Worse, they now believe they can do both,

“You can't handle the truth!“ - Colonel Nathan R. Jessup, A Few Good Men (1992) "We need to fix your funnel." Those six words from an investor's mouth have sunk more founder relationships than any down round ever could. Yet they're uttered in boardrooms daily by VCs who can't resist playing marketer, growth hacker, and CEO all at once. There's a phrase that's quietly rotting the venture capital ecosystem from the inside: "We're a value-add fund." You hear it in every pitch meeting. See it on websites. Read it in partner manifestos. We help with growth. With hiring. With go-to-market.…

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