I have seen a lot of my friends raise money in web2. Way back in 20120-15.
I have seen a lot of amazing possibilities die for the fact that the founder was expected to live a frugal life, riding their bikes in Mumbai traffic, having to build their own websites, and broom their own offices.
This was expected.
Then I see the shittiest of ideas raise multi-million $ funding in the Valley.
It reflects the lack of risk-taking culture in our investors.
This should not happen. And that is why I work at BuidlersTribe (as opposed to sitting on a beach) to make sure these possibilities do not die a premature death just because founders could not live a good life or could not raise capital.
Raising capital has become synonymous to burning money to acquire customers. Like Uber, Swiggy or Tomato. But that is not the only thing.
Good founders are mostly raising money for paying their devs, for hiring good community folks, and that should never be a problem.
And although we’re no kingmakers yet, I work towards a world where one day, I can mobilize so much capital for good founders that they get to buidl at a level-playing field on a global scale.
PS: Everyone who is thinking of Zoho, please read about survivorship bias before commenting.