InnExperience – Innovation goes bananas!!

Thingamy’s Sigurd Rinde’s great post here. From the post – Goodbye VCs, it’s been a pleasure

Betting on markets is not business building, it’s not innovation, it’s financial crap shooting.

Many of the reasons I did not choose to have Ideafarms funded by Vulture Capitalists are so lucidly captured in his post.

1. On exit strategies

And my favourite – Andy Grove and the “payday” mentioned above: 

What really infuriates him is the concept of the “exit strategy.” “Intel never had an exit strategy,” Grove says. “These days, people cobble something together. No capital. No technology. They measure eyeballs and sell advertising. Then they get rid of it. You can’t build an empire out of this kind of concoction. You don’t even try.”

Did Microsoft, Google, Intel, Dell and Amazon spend time on “exit strategies”? Doubt it.

Exit strategy is something to pooh pooh at. Makes a money lender holding your home to ransom look like a saint! The VC community cannot even imagine the damage they have done to genuine entrepreneurship. Some of it will not be undone for generations.

2. On the role of the VC and the ‘passenger’  investor

I love Sig’s allusion to the investor being the passenger. How irritating to have a passenger sit in the back seat while you’re driving, giving you instructions about when to step on the gas when he has never even learnt to drive.

I’m not against delivering the best possible value to the venture investors, quite on the contrary, but there should not be any doubt that the best shareholder values delivered over time have consistently been delivered by those who can create a great value for their customers while keeping a good margin.

And the customer is the start-up, the VC is the vehicle and the investor is the passenger. The passengers are always much better off if the driver keeps his eyes peeled on the road.

I join Sig in wishing VCs farewell and hope they will never return. RIP

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