I recently was a panelist for a women's cleantech forum. I was invited along as the "entrepreneur that has successfully raised money in this sector". I really liked the format -it was just a well managed Q and A. It made me think that:
1. VC's get a bad wrap at the moment.
2. We need them. Without VC our great ideas will remain just that, great ideas.
3 Seed investment is harder than ever to find !
I've probably said it before but VC allows entrepreneurs to take risks that they would otherwise be unable to take. It also allows you to break the 'prime directive' and change the space-time continuum by doing things much faster than be possible any other way.
So what are the downsides ?
My perspective is very EU centric here but... investors look for reference points in order to gauge risk. If those reference points are in the form of milestones which are aligned with the company's business strategy then that's fine. If they're not then you might end up deviating from your strategy in order to satisfy the need an investor has for reference points. let me rephrase that: No matter whom you investor, is you will be very lucky if you don't have to tweak your strategy in order to satisfy investment milestones!
