Top 10 Lies of Venture Capitalists - Guy Kawasaki

Nice. I like the followup even more ( http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2006/01/the_top_ten_lie_1.html ). I'm sure all of these are just as applicable now as when he wrote them. It all boils down to genuine confidence in your product. If you're truly confident (not just optimistic, which we should be also) you won't get strung along by the VC's- you'll do your work, make a level pitch and move on until you find the one that matches well. Similarly you will be more honest with your pitch. This kind of confidence you only get with real business experience and/or real customers really using your product.

When you land a VC deal and get $4mil, are you going to dance around with euphoria and say "we did it! we did it!" or are you going to say "well, that'll be 2 years to capture x percent of the market instead of 7 years- I hope it was worth giving up x percent of the company." If only the former, then you can take that as a clue right now that your business isn't quite ready probably.

(I'm being a little facetious- of course you'll celebrate regardless).

We need more models of successful companies done without VC funding.

At too many startup conferences I've been to, the message (explicit or implied) was "you need VC funding".

I'm sure it's not always true.