Are Venture Capitalists Just Entrepreneurs With a Different Kind of Product?
Entrepreneur Office Hours - Issue #334
Inside the Office
In general, I’m not a huge fan of bringing guest speakers into my classes.
This isn’t the place to unpack all my reasons, and I realize I’m a bit on an island with this opinion. The short version is that most guest speakers end up talking at students rather than engaging with them, and I’m not convinced that’s the best use of classroom time.
However, I do have one major exception: venture capitalists. I love when venture capitalists are able to visit my classes, and one of the advantages of teaching Duke in Silicon Valley this past month is that I’ve gotten to bring in quite a few guests with venture capital backgrounds. In fact, we just had one visit us today, and as I listened to him describe his work, I found myself reminded of something I wish more young entrepreneurs knew. Simply put, I think Investors are one of the most misunderstood parts of the startup ecosystem.
The issue stems from the fact that aspiring founders usually encounter venture capital through media. They watch Shark Tank, they read TechCrunch, and they hear stories about founders raising millions of dollars, and, as a result, they assume investors are basically magical money people sitting around waiting to fund brilliant ideas.
But that’s not what venture capital is. Venture capital is a business model. And understanding that business model is incredibly important for founders because it changes how you think about fundraising.
Take the investor who visited my class. From the outside, students see someone with “venture capitalist” in his title and imagine he spends his days deciding which startups deserve money. But his firm is only a few years old, which means, when he described his actual work, it sounded surprisingly familiar.
He’s networking. He’s building relationships. He’s fundraising. He’s promoting his firm. He’s managing operations. He’s trying to create deal flow. He’s producing content. He’s hosting conversations. He’s building a reputation.
In other words, he sounds a lot like an entrepreneur. And that’s not a coincidence. He is an entrepreneur. His startup just happens to be an investment vehicle, and instead of selling software or consumer products, he’s selling capital and expertise.
That’s why I think it’s so valuable for students to meet investors early. Before you have a chance to meet a lot of VCs, you tend to assume they’re the “important ones” because they’ve got millions — perhaps even billions — of dollars to spend. But once you get to know a few of them, you quickly realize venture capitalists are building businesses, too. As a result, fundraising starts looking very different. You stop treating investors like mysterious gatekeepers who need to be convinced to bless your startup. Instead, you start asking why a particular investor might want to partner with your company?
That’s a much more useful way to think about fundraising because the best venture relationships aren’t really about money. They’re about fit.
In fact, “invest in” may not even be the best phrase.
“Partner with” is probably better. And the best founders understand this.
They don’t walk into fundraising conversations assuming they’re the only ones being evaluated. They recognize both sides are trying to determine whether a partnership makes sense for the two businesses that, at their core, are still just working hard to exist. And it becomes one of the most important lessons young entrepreneurs can learn about fundraising.
After all, venture capital isn’t magic. It’s a market. And markets work best when both sides understand what the other is actually trying to accomplish.
-Aaron
Worth Your Time
My “Worth Your Time” this week isn’t a book, an article, or a podcast. It’s a mindset. Specifically, it’s about doing something that feels like a waste of time because it’s so inefficient, and recognizing that the inefficiency is exactly the point.
I learned to code in 1995. Fortran 77, a language so dead it’s basically a fossil, then later C++ and HTML. That was decades ago. Which means for most of my career, “building something” has been about partnering with a technical person to bring a vision to life, not necessarily doing it myself.
So lately I’ve been forcing myself to roll up my sleeves. Setting up my own design guidelines and guardrails in Claude. Fumbling through installing OpenClaw and trying to build agents. Installing a VS Code terminal and “writing” software. And Failing. A lot.
The thing is, everyone seems to be talking about the value of these tools, but far fewer are actually teaching themselves to use them. They aren’t getting curious or pushing the boundaries to see what they can and can’t do well. And I get it, being a beginner again is slow and frustrating and deeply inefficient. But that struggle is where the learning lives--and I’ve learned a ton over these past few months.
Don’t just talk. Roll your sleeves up and take the time to get uncomfortable being a learner. It’s 100% worth your time.
 | A guest post by
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