<story><title>Ask HN: Do you regret taking investment?</title></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>luckydude</author><text>I regret not taking it.  Hummer-Winblad really wanted to give us some money but I couldn&amp;#x27;t figure out what they brought to the table.  In retrospect, it was marketing, the money could have paid for marketing.  And because they were invested they would have insisted on marketing.&lt;p&gt;Did I mention we needed some marketing?  We really needed some marketing.&lt;p&gt;So, while it&amp;#x27;s very common to ask about taking investment, also look hard at the whole picture and see if there is a part of it that you&amp;#x27;ll (perhaps secretly) admit that you don&amp;#x27;t want to do.  If you are in complete control you can kid yourself that you&amp;#x27;ll get to that part and never do it.  Or, in our case, not do it until it is too late.&lt;p&gt;Investment can be viewed as adding some adult supervision.  I screwed up by not taking it, I was so worried about the dreaded VC&amp;#x27;s screwing up my company that I didn&amp;#x27;t consider the possibility that they could also help.  Well I did, but was too stupid to value the marketing part (I&amp;#x27;m a hard core engineer at heart).</text></comment>
<story><title>Ask HN: Do you regret taking investment?</title></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>smirksirlot</author><text>I&amp;#x27;ve worked at 2 different startups - currently in management capacity at one. 2 cents:&lt;p&gt;1) Appreciate the $ that it provides for income + ability to grow
2) If we could do it again I would not recommend it to the founders and instead focus on bootstrapping&lt;p&gt;Managing and dealing with pressures from investor is a giant suck on ability to think. No matter how much you say you&amp;#x27;re going to ignore them, they will ALWAYS weight on you and you will always weigh their opinion. This is despite them not knowing much about your industry or tech or market.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ve increasingly come to the opinion that investors become a drag on the company, and the best investors are the ones who put money in and stay completely out of the way.</text></comment>