The Best Time To Raise Money Is When You Can

What about the counter-wisdom to this, which is that too much money when you don't need it can kill your start-up by forcing you to increase your burnt rate and aim higher than your start-up can support?

Taking money when you don't need it doesn't necessarily help you in any way. As I have gathered from my conversations with people who have taken VC money (and those who haven't), taking VC money comes with additional burden of a number of admin tasks (meetings with them, status updates, etc etc)

If you just want to focus on building the product first, I don't think there's anything wrong with not taking money.

Clearly, for the VC, the best time for you to raise money is whenever you can.