Re: Bye-bye Ada ?

[Ole-Hjalmar Kristensen <oleh@vlinux.voxelvision.no>]

"Marin David Condic" <mcondic.auntie.spam@acm.org> writes:

> Richard Riehle <richard@adaworks.com> wrote in message
> news:3E41E35B.8E52C580@adaworks.com...
> > Marin David Condic wrote:
> >
> > Wrong.  The last thing you want is outside money.   Stay away from Venture
> > Capitalists.  They will destroy your product, your will, your self-esteem,
> > and everything you loved about what you were doing.
> >
> 
> Had a bad experience with a venture capitalist? :-)
> 
> Well, obviously, the Golden Rule applies: "He who has the gold makes the
> rules" Once you take someone's money for something, they're going to want to
> control what you do with it. (This is especially true of the government - so
> it doesn't get better for the DoD contractors.) This may or may not be a bad
> thing, depending on what one's objective are. And in the end, businesses
> tend to have to go find investors of one form or another, so you're always
> going to have that potential.
> 
> But consider that one might go build a prototype program for something as a
> "Concept Demonstrator" and you show that to potential investors. If they
> like the idea, they're not going to give a rip about what language it was
> written in nor how you go about building it. They're only interest is going
> to be how to get it to market quickly and how to get it to sell well so they
> can start making truckloads of money. In this respect they can be helpful to
> your average geek who has no experience with those issues.
> 
> They may want to take your product or your company down a path you don't
> want to go and they'll have the leverage to do that, so if your objective in
> life is to sell *this* product and run *this* company, yes, they can ruin
> your plans. OTOH, if the thing was at all successful, you'll almost
> certainly walk away from it with a big chunk of money in your hands and then
> you can go out and get another good idea, fund it yourself and go have fun
> running *that* company with *that* product. So a venture capitalist or two
> might be a useful thing, depending on one's goals and perspective.
> 

The problem with maximizing the gains, which is probably the reason
the vultures would like to change your plans, is that you also
maximize the risks. This does not matter too much to the venture
capitalists, because they spread their risk, one company in ten
getting a real success is enough for them. 

Remember, their goal is not to maximize the probability of you getting a profit.

And yes, *I have* bad experiences with venture capitalists.

-- 
Ole-Hj. Kristensen

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