&gt; <i>...The problem is not so much the money itself as what comes with it. As one VC who spoke at Y Combinator said, &quot;Once you take several million dollars of my money, the clock is ticking.&quot; If VCs fund you, they&#x27;re not going to let you just put the money in the bank and keep operating as two guys living on ramen. They want that money to go to work.</i><p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;paulgraham.com&#x2F;startupmistakes.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;paulgraham.com&#x2F;startupmistakes.html</a><p>This is an example of A16Z killing a startup. They only care about about the big hits, so they&#x27;ll happily dump too-many-millions into small products like ProductHunt and RapGenius, trying to force them to Get Big Fast.<p>ProductHunt should&#x27;ve been operated by two people for 5+ years but they raised too much money. Communities can&#x27;t really be bought with money. You have to grow them organically and authentically over many years. Hacker News and reddit are perfect examples to emulate.<p>Digg is an example of the VC way of doing things.