Meet Your New Role Model: The Workhorse

I never liked the term Unicorn. It never made sense to me to aspire to something mythical and therefore of theoretical value.

I’ve written before about the risks associated with trying to make unicorns and the fact that entrepreneurs are the ones who bare the burden of the risks associated with a go big or stay home company building philosophy. Unfortunately, over the past several years, tech-entrepreneurship seemed to become synonymous with making unicorns. If you weren’t working toward a billion dollar valuation in short order, you were wasting your time and the time of all of the investors to whom you were pitching your business plan.

For entrepreneurs who – for the past five years – have been enamored to achieve unicorn status, it may be time to leave the…

Meet Your New Role Model: The Workhorse

Why VCs Need to Create Value

VentureBeat’s Entrepreneur Corner has a must read post today on the recent history of the Venture Capital business model. Every entrepreneur should read this, particularly those looking to raise venture capital and in the enviable position of being able to select the right investor for their company.

The author, Steve Blank, walks the reader through four distinct exit market cycles and discusses venture capital behaviour and philosophy in the context of those market cycles. The title of the article is a bit misleading as it posits whether or not you can trust VCs under 40. I’ll return to that later; suffice to say for now that it is one of those titles intended to stir controversy, but not fundamentally of value. 

Why VCs Need to Create Value