Fred Destin has an interesting post up today where he is asking his readership to let him know why VC's and entrepreneurs have become such enemies. I have to admit I too have been sensing an ever growing gap between VC's and entrepreneurs and oftentimes find it completely unfounded. At the same time, I've seen so much poor behavior from both sides of the coin that it doesn't surprise me.
So what's going on? Well, I too am going to be anxiously awaiting Fred's post based on the feedback he gets. Yet, I can almost guarantee that two things will come up. First, on the VC side, you are going to hear that too many VC's have no idea how to grow companies and what is necessary to make a business successful. I couldn't agree more that there are VC's out there who don't know what they are doing yet this is the case in every industry (see my other post: VC's Are Full of Shit!) On the entrepreneur side you'll see that the expectations of entrepreneurs are hardly ever aligned with those of the VC, i.e. 10x returns and so forth (read: You Don't Have to Take a VC's Money). I also presume you'll see a lot more VC bashing in the responses than you will entrepreneur bashing. The entrepreneurs tend to be more vocal. :-)
Will we learn from this? Well, it'll be interesting to see what kind of feedback Fred gets and how he puts it together. At the same time, there has been so much written about this. I think it all comes down to expectations and doing your homework. As a VC, if you don't understand how the business works and how to interact and succeed with entrepreneurs, you'll eventually be weeded out by the fundraising process. As an entrepreneur, if you don't understand a VC's expectations and what is coming at you when raising venture capital, you will ultimately fail (and probably blame it on the VC).
I'll make sure to link to Fred's follow-up post when it's available. This should be a good one!