One of the better predictors of who is likely to succeed as an entrepreneur is determination. Closely related is truly believing in your idea. If you're the kind of person who easily gives up so that you can try and roll the dice again, then you clearly lack those traits and would be a bad bet.
So VCs learn to respect people who are determined, and truly believe in what they are doing. The entrepreneurs who stick it out are therefore demonstrating that they are people the VCs should respect, even though the relationship is not working out well for anyone. On top of that working together through shared hardships tend to create bonds - and these are people who work together with the VCs through shared hardships.
Moving on to the second half of the equation, what about the VC? It may be tempting to quickly abandon all of your failures. But doing so means making worse returns than you could otherwise. Furthermore developing a reputation for abandoning too easily hurts your reputation as a VC, and therefore hurts your ability to find good future deals. So a VC is stuck with their bad decisions as well as their good.
And a final fact for you. The bigger the investment that you take, the harder it becomes to win big. There are many reasons for this. One is that too much money makes people complacent. Another is that there are more potential markets out there that are worth $50 million than are worth $250 million, so it is more likely that someone you invested $2 million at a $10 million valuation can earn 5x returns than someone you invested $10 million at a $50 million valuation can. Therefore VCs are on the lookout for opportunities that are big enough to be worth their time, but want to invest as little as they can in each one.
So VCs learn to respect people who are determined, and truly believe in what they are doing. The entrepreneurs who stick it out are therefore demonstrating that they are people the VCs should respect, even though the relationship is not working out well for anyone. On top of that working together through shared hardships tend to create bonds - and these are people who work together with the VCs through shared hardships.
Moving on to the second half of the equation, what about the VC? It may be tempting to quickly abandon all of your failures. But doing so means making worse returns than you could otherwise. Furthermore developing a reputation for abandoning too easily hurts your reputation as a VC, and therefore hurts your ability to find good future deals. So a VC is stuck with their bad decisions as well as their good.
And a final fact for you. The bigger the investment that you take, the harder it becomes to win big. There are many reasons for this. One is that too much money makes people complacent. Another is that there are more potential markets out there that are worth $50 million than are worth $250 million, so it is more likely that someone you invested $2 million at a $10 million valuation can earn 5x returns than someone you invested $10 million at a $50 million valuation can. Therefore VCs are on the lookout for opportunities that are big enough to be worth their time, but want to invest as little as they can in each one.