In Defense of Venture Capitalists
As an eternal optimist, I wake most days with a bright perspective. Today, I woke in a particularly good mood and before heading out for an early-morning workout, I sat down at my computer with a cup of french-pressed to scan the morning’s stories. One thing I came across was a blog post by Ben Horowitz, a tremendously successful entrepreneur who recently became a venture capitalist, partnering with Mark Andreessen to form Andreessen Horowitz. Now by all accounts, Ben’s a terrific guy who is passionate about building great businesses and I think it’s fantastic that guys like Mark and Ben have chosen to use their vast experience to help a whole new generation of entrepreneurs build their companies. However, as I read through Ben’s post, my sunny mood went downhill. I read it twice and I grew ticked off that Ben chose to rant about things that VCs do that he doesn’t like. I chalked it up to the fact that Ben probably had a bad experience with a VC yesterday and decided to vent a little bit. I jumped on the bike and began to pedal. As the miles went by, I couldn’t get Ben’s comments out of my mind. It bothered me that a prominent guy like Ben, after only nine months as a VC, took time on his bully pulpit to rant about the behavior of his colleagues.
