How To Build Your Startup -- Or Not
There was a vigorous debate at the Churchill Club this morning on how startups should grow. This is the type of activity that passes for entertainment in Silicon Valley, but it was fun and a lot of good points were made. Pursue venture capital? Jon Fisher, who teaches entrepreneurship at the University of San Francisco and has sold a company to Oracle, claimed you can get by without it. Go public? Nearly impossible now, although everybody hopes that will change, and Josh Stein from Draper Fisher argued that mergers and acquisitions "preserve the static order of things," while IPOs reward disruptive innovation because big companies aren't good at innovation. ("How successful would Tesla be as a division of GM?"). Also, public money is cheaper than venture capital.
