How to go about the Venture Capital Game and not suck at it.

Why you don’t want $10 million. How to play the game.

Until you have a real strategy to get the mass you need the obvious reason is, that it would be a complete waste. But that is not the main reason.

In your seed stage you want to take less, you want to take the amount you need to over deliver. Your primary goal in seed is to gain a few hundred thousand dollars and deliver on your “Go To Market” ($250k to max $2m). This I the most important step and here is why.

In your seed when you seriously over deliver on first revenue and make your first stage investors very happy. It will make your Series A investors look on that seed investor like an Early Bitcoin adopter ie the best thing that ever happened. But you are not done, because once again in your series A you are going to take less YES I SAID LESS - $2m to $7m

In series A you will acquire revenue and build a solid business this business will show growth beyond its value and now really start to be attractive to bigger but more conservative tech investors. (When I got my valuation back I listed my VC price at around at 1/5th of the valuation price deliberately)

This will attract a real series B, CELEBRATE BUY A FANCY CAR – NO NO NO with your 35 Million dollars you are going to take 80% and go on a mad acquisition spree for users unlike anything ever before. Oh and by the way this time you are going to again UNDER VALUE BUT ONLY A LITTLE
You have now set the stage for the master stroke the 3rd and final series. In the final series you are going to deliver to or just over your target by 20%. You will then get an accurate revenue based mega round that is showing growth. THIS IS THE SETUP FOR PAYDAY.

Newly minted with your x billion dollar value based on an honest and revenue related third round, you will IPO and then exit.  WELL DONE YOU HAVE MADE IT AND YOU ARE STUPIDLY RICH – GOOD ON YOU FOR ACTUALLY APPROACHING THIS LIKE A BUSINESS AND NOT TECHNOLOGY  (REMEMBER TECHNOLOGY IS NOT THE BUSINESS ITS JUST A PRODUCT NOTHING MORE)

IF YOU WERE NOT GREEDY, YOU WILL DO THIS IN WORST CASE 4 YEARS BEST CASE 2 YEARS.