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Why burn his own money when he can get VC money instead?

If he believes in the product he could have kept 100% of his company.

Most of the time it's not about the money VCs send into it but the credibility that this brings. It looks a lot more mature when your idea is backed by a distribution of wealthy people.

He kept 80%. The other 20% is owned by 8 different VCs. Seems like he's still in control. There's value in using other people's money instead of your own because it might make him less emotionally risk-averse in how he manages it.

100% of something without any measurable adoption or scale can suck.

The point is more - it's primary goal is not to enable developers to do more and better, it's primary goal is to _maximize shareholder value_. Important thing to keep in mind.

The world's richest man solicited investors and other people's money to buy Twitter.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acquisition_of_Twitter_by_Elon...

I think that's just how rich people play the game. Why use your own money when you can use other people's money?

Maybe he prefers to burn someone else’s money.

You know even Google looked for external investors for Waymo, right?

Yeah, Google. That company with more than $100B in cash. Even they know that it's better to burn someone else's money.

Certain amount of risk per initiative.

Diversify.