This Is The Only Reason Startups Should Raise Venture Capital

The most asked startup question has a simple, four-point answer

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It’s definitely the question I get most often: “How do I get the money I need to fund my startup idea?”

And it’s the one I answer the least, because there’s usually something hiding behind that question. When entrepreneurs come to me with that question, experience has taught me that they’re looking for a shortcut to the long, painful, and expensive fundraising process. But there isn’t one.

My thing isn’t about helping entrepreneurs raise money. There are a million different resources, including the venture capital firms themselves, that are better equipped to help a smart entrepreneur figure out how to go about finding money for their startup idea.

My thing is helping entrepreneurs build startups that are better equipped to make money, by generating revenue and realizing profit. Admittedly, I’ve built and sold companies both with and without investor funds. So I’m well versed in doing it both ways. And I can tell you that raising money and making money are two completely different goals.

In fact, raising money isn’t even a goal at all, it’s just the first step on a long journey with no guaranteed outcome. So I’d always rather raise money as a last resort — a path to take only when that path is absolutely necessary and all the other paths are dead ends.

So how do you know when that is?

There Are a Million Reasons To Think You Need To Raise Money

Like I said, I get the “How do I get the money” question often, about once a week. And it almost always comes with a bunch of reasons why raising any amount — from a few thousand dollars to a few million — would propel the idea into the stratosphere of startup success.

But in every case, and I mean EVERY CASE, you can read between the lines of any given reason and it becomes: “I don’t have access to the money I need to launch the product I want to launch.”

And when you peel away the layers of that statement, it can be further distilled down to: “I want to build a polished product and the infrastructure to sell…