They are more likely to bail out at the first sign of trouble now than a year ago. VCs are prioritizing deals that they are investing on. The lower the priority your company is, the higher risk that the VCs will pull the plug on you. Under this environment, it s extremely important to focus on the finance aspect of the business. Every round of funding is important, especially when the next round of funding isn t a given any more.
Technology is very important.
Choosing the right technology so that it will be able to solve the real problem, sustaining future growth is a very critical part of a successful business. Mr. Shurtleff pointed out that there s no bug free software, but in the case of Microsoft, they did a very good job of releasing software that s good enough to ship. That s one of the reasons why they ve achieved the kind of success that they have. Software also has to be able to scale for future growth. A component based software architecture is very important in this aspect.