Thank you!

It really depends on the VC, but actually on how much control that VC would have. Even Basecamp in 2006 announced they were taking money from Jeff Bezos's VC fund, but see how they justified it: https://signalvnoise.com/archives2/bezos_expeditions_invests...

I'll be honest, we applied to many VCs when we starting out building https://github.com/Qbix/Platform for instance. But it was just too open-source and too general-purpose to be of interest to most VCs. To his credit, Albert Wenger from Union Square Ventures (the same guys who led the Twitter rounds) met with us in 2014 and said he totally OK with disrupting the VC model. He later became a partner in USV. Albert is a rare VC who writes about a post-capitalism world... here is a book he wrote, in which he is giving it away: http://worldaftercapital.org/

I also like USV because even its principal, Fred Wilson, talked for years about crypto leading to cooperatives where the network is owned by the participants: https://avc.com/2016/01/network-equity/

I will reveal the "realpolitik" (i.e. the industry without the romance). VCs often write really cool things and the top ones end up supporting world-changing companies. And many of them are really nice people, in real life, and want to do good, just as many CEOs of large Wall St firms. But the job changes you. Just like a car salesman has to do certain "assholish" things or someone else will make the sale, similarly being a VC makes you do certain things. VCs definitely write a great lot of great things, and on their own those things are awesome. But they're also signals the VC puts out in order to attract "dealflow", so they can be surrounded by "orbiters" of startups the way artists have an entourage or directors have a portfolio of actors.

Most of these startups never make it (think of actors who move to Hollywood and take many extras roles for years) but they are indeed valuable to show the new tech that is being worked on, when need be. The larger VCs ultimately get all the best deal flow, while the smaller VCs attend lots of events and try network their way into deals with the big VCs. The "best deals" are the ones where a company gets heavily funded, attracts a lot of users, and more VCs pile on, followed by Private Equity firms etc. It's a self-fulfilling thing, not too different from DogeCoin or SafeMoon or EverRise -- the only difference is that in the latter, everyone can play VC.

Since 1933, the Securities and Exchange Acts by the US Federal Government established the SEC, and the idea of an "accredited" investor. Crypto made it so that everyone can invest. But to be legal, the crowd would have to through an accredited crowdfunding portal. This is something enabled by the JOBS act, which many people underappreciate.

So yes, if I had a choice, I'd definitely prefer crowdfunding, and we do: https://wefunder.com/Qbix

There are companies (like Rialto Markets and others) that will let you do a whitelabeled crowdfunding on your own site. It's legal and you can sell tokens. There are also other ways to raise money: https://community.intercoin.org/t/how-intercoin-helps-to-rai...

If you want to know my personal stance, here is a video I recorded recently, it's actually for angel investors: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4qFuZcaNuRI