Raising The Most Money Doesn’t Mean Your Company Will Become The Most Valuable

Very timely article. I spoke to an entrepreneur couple of weeks ago and his view was that raising VC funding would validate his company and make sure its a viable business. I was surprised to hear that from him, especially when building a successful business should be about 'bootstrapping' and getting paying customers. It should not be about getting validation from 'group thinking'.

VCs have a place in the startup world, but they should only be used if and when needed...

Maybe I'm missing something, but of those companies, several are public at multiples of their total raised funds and only one is out of business. They might not have become Google 2.0 but I'd be hard pressed to call that collection of companies a cautionary tale against raising lots of money.

Note that I'm not disagreeing with the premise that raising money shouldn't be a metric of success, just with the specific examples.

"...pay more attention to joining the billion dollar revenue club." That is a rather large number. For most, you can survive and grow with far less than the billion mark and never take a drop of venture (and still be considered a success).