150. Don't Take Venture Capital feat. Abby Mercado @ Rescripted

I don't know if Rich is gonna like this, but I would actually say don't raise from VC. I think one of my best pieces of advice to any founder is really think deeply and do a lot of research on if your business actually needs VC funding. Are you wanting to build a business that requires VC investment? There are different ways to fund businesses outside of venture capital. For instance, at Rescripted. The only institutional dollars we have in our business, those dollars are from Techstars, that is an early stage accelerator. Those were the first dollars that we ever took. Outside of that, we never raised from VC. Being a media business, VC's don't wanna invest in media, that's fine. I still love my life and love the business that we're building, but it just wasn't a fit and that's all fine and well Think deeply about the type of business that you're trying to build, especially at this early stage. Make sure you know if it is actually going to fit the VC model. In rescripted stage and case, we've raised three different rounds from Angels and we've gotten to profitability with those rounds. And, you know, never say never we might go on to raise institutional dollars. I have no idea. But so far, so good. And we're profitable and, growing like wildfire. I'm a former venture investor, and that was super hard for me emotionally to say, oh gosh, VCs don't wanna invest in me. And it wasn't me it was the business and it was the business that we're building. It wasn't a venture style business. During our seed round we did try to raise VC, but before we were three months into the process, we had filled 75% of the round with angel checks. And at that point we were like, okay, well no VC is even gonna invest in this, so we're just gonna keep going down the angel track. That was the right move for us. On that note, angels can be really great especially if you are building a business that doesn't require a lot of capital like Rescripted. In some cases Angels can close you round before you can even get to a VC check, which was a really valuable learning for me. So, VC is not for everybody. It's not for every business, it's not for every founder. And that is just fine. Don't get yourself all in a mess because you didn't raise VC.