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Comment by themartorana | Hacker News Reader

When you're playing the game of "make a single-service product, get millions of investment dollars, sell it to Facebook or Google for billions at 1000x revenue premium while still not profitable and cash out," don't be surprised that the people on the other side of the table with the actual money are playing the same high-risk long-shot maximize-output game you are. They just hold all the cards.

There's no altruism in this game.

Edit: autocorrect

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Well, there is always an option to follow this advice: "If you don't absolutely positively have to have VC and if you aren't absolutely committed to growing to be a $1B revenue company regardless of risk, don't raise VC."

Unfortunately a lot of people start out by going to an incubator like YC before they really realise what they are getting into (the billion dollar exit lottery instead of aiming for a profitable business). Once you go down that path it's difficult to avoid VC fundraising. The entire point of most incubators is to help you get connected with VCs and get funding.

>"make a single-service product, get millions of investment dollars, sell it to Facebook or Google for billions at 1000x revenue premium while still not profitable and cash out"

And if you're not playing this game, realize that most of the folks that VCs see are.

Yikes. It's statements like these that make me happy / proud to be a bootstrapped and (moderately) profitable "lifestyle" business.

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