Actual success rates aren't that important - I think the point can be examined more clearly simply by considering things in their true light: there is a big difference between having money you've got and having money someone has lent you. They may both be money, but one is a credit and one is a debt.
Practically, this is the difference between buying a house with cash or buying it with a mortgage. And that's part of DHH's point - the homeowner who buys their house with a mortgage they can pay only if everything goes right is hardly and barely the owner of their house or destiny.
I'd also add that the successful moon-shot companies don't justify the business model in-and-of-themselves either. An overnight success, beholden to investors with short time frames, that gets pushed to an IPO and into the arms of shareholders with an even shorter timeframe . . . not an attractive recipe in my opinion. Companies built slowly, organically, and personally are capable of more longer-term thinking and risk-taking then entities that more resemble a joint-venture between investors and contract workers glued together mostly by their dream of mutual exits. If everyone is thinking of how they are going to leave, the bonds are by definition very weak.
This is not an indictment of VCs per se - moreso of the short-term pressures that dominate when money is at stake and opportunity costs are forever pressing on the gas pedal.
Practically, this is the difference between buying a house with cash or buying it with a mortgage. And that's part of DHH's point - the homeowner who buys their house with a mortgage they can pay only if everything goes right is hardly and barely the owner of their house or destiny.
I'd also add that the successful moon-shot companies don't justify the business model in-and-of-themselves either. An overnight success, beholden to investors with short time frames, that gets pushed to an IPO and into the arms of shareholders with an even shorter timeframe . . . not an attractive recipe in my opinion. Companies built slowly, organically, and personally are capable of more longer-term thinking and risk-taking then entities that more resemble a joint-venture between investors and contract workers glued together mostly by their dream of mutual exits. If everyone is thinking of how they are going to leave, the bonds are by definition very weak.
This is not an indictment of VCs per se - moreso of the short-term pressures that dominate when money is at stake and opportunity costs are forever pressing on the gas pedal.