> It can also help to have something else: a chip on your shoulder. Josh Wolfe, of Lux Capital, is fond of the phrase "chips on shoulders put chips in pockets." Feeling left out, excluded, or estranged can make you extremely competitive. VCs want founders who are willing to commit to low-probability ideas — ideas they think the rest of the world is wrong about — for a decade or more. What motivates a person to do something like that? Wolfe, who grew up in a single-parent home in New York's gritty Coney Island neighborhood, told me he thinks there's a common answer: revenge.

At this time, I'd like to ask all the VCs to form an orderly line in front of my desk, and to have their checkbooks ready.