When you work in a high-risk industry of startups — whether as an entrepreneur, an employee, a VC, or a consultant — there will be failures. You know that. And you are always surprised how much they hurt. You would think by now surely you’ve learned how to cope with it. It’s painful and frustrating, and for failed startups far more devastating than for the VC — we have a portfolio of companies to spread our risk, you have the past five years of work and perhaps fifty employees and their families. But VCs fail, too. The pressure to deliver outperforming funds is tremendous (Venture Capital as an asset class, on average, sucks), and VC partnerships have their own friction and changes given the “unique” personalities involved, our “strong opinions, weakly held”.
So Why Do We Keep Doing It?
Since the birth of my two kids I’ve had no time for drinking (ironically, some friends tell me the opposite), but I’m going to quote Willie Nelson here:
There’s a lot of doctors tell me
That I’d better start slowing it down
But there’s more old drunks than there are old doctors
So I guess we’d better have another round
