I hope it doesn't sound too pedantic, but the 'C' in VC stands for capital, so saying money or capital after VC is redundant. The only reason I was driven to write this is because of how many times it was written.
When the parent writes:
> A great example of a company taking on VC money
VC can stand for "venture capitalist" in that context. So "VC money" equating to venture capitalist money, would in fact be a proper use.
Further, venture capital is a specific type of money. One could also correctly say: bond money, debt money, home equity money, (the) bank loan money, among others and they act as an elaboration of the type of money in question as all context of money is not the same. If I say: the bank loan, that's not necessarily the same as: the bank loan money. The same can be true for venture capital. If I say: the venture capital (eg: we need to discuss the venture capital situation), it can mean the broader arrangement (such as the VC terms) or situation of fund raising, rather than being about the venture capital cash specifically.
I think this is because "VC" is only one type of investment, and for other similar forms of investment the phrase is nonsensical. For example, PE means "Private Equity" but you can't say "I took PE." (Equity means ownership, and taking money from an investor means giving up ownership, not taking it.) "I took VC" is basically abusing the dual meaning of "Capital" as the thing an investor provides in exchange for equity and the thing a business uses to operate.
In the middle ages, when literacy (and therefore large vocabularies) were uncommon, it was considered good form to include three redundant synonyms or phrases all in a row, creating emphasis, giving the reader the best chance of understanding the writer correctly, and demonstrating that the author understood his language well and probably meant what he was saying. (Not "she" so much, then.)
It's now considered good form in technical writing to start with examples or present them as soon as possible, but examples are, by definition, semantically redundant. Should we axe them all? Absolutely not, since that would greatly slow, and sometimes prevent, comprehension.
These days, I read cash flow, income and balance statements in the thousands per year.
(We all have our little pet peeves :-)