Unpopular opinion: if your company is going to succeed, why do you need VC? Sure, (nearly) every really really big company pulled VC at some point, but this is an industry full of survivor bias - and VC's know full well that almost all their punts are going to fail. VC is, arguably, the most expensive money you will ever borrow. If you could borrow a couple of hundred K against, say, obscene house prices in San Francisco it would save you multiple millions down the road.

Unpopular opinion: if your company is going to fail, you need VC money. This, to me, is one of the biggest problems facing our entire industry. The 1/20 that succeed have to carry the 19/20 that want to be cool and have bean bags in their office.

The (smaller) VC's have to, ideally, find that little narrow gap between a self-funded startup starting to "go" and the time when the founders decide they can live on a quarter million a year and be just fine. To be frank, it sounds really hard and I don't envy them the task. But they do get to charge 2% for doing nothing and I could do with some of that :)

How can we create a VC industry that's focussed on more, smaller wins? Perhaps a focus on recurring dividends? Or does the math work out that there is simply no point because the big wins are so, so big?