I'm hearing echoes of my liberal arts education in that first paragraph. For what it's worth, if you otherize the VC but understand what 2 and 20 means, you will successfully predict the behavior of a VC much, much, much more often than someone who has a deep personal relationship on a human level with his VC but who does not understand the math in this post.
This is not a hypothetical. Many entrepreneurs have become friends with entrepreneurs-specializing-in-money-management before. Then their friend e.g. blocks a sale (want to hear a story about that? Find any five experienced people in the Valley -- I think you'll hear about three) and the entrepreneur is dumbfounded. This was not dumbfounding behavior -- it is predictable like the sun rising in the east.
Totally agree- I didnt mean not to understand the incentives, I just meant don't paint all VCs as a group as having a certain set of values or goals. Everyone, whether VC or entrepreneur, acts in response to a combination of the incentives in front of them and the rewards they value. If you understand a person's goals and the incentives in front of them, you can often predict what they are going to do reasonably accurately. Whether entrepreneur or VC, some people want a lifestyle business; some people want fame; some people want fortune; some people want to solve hard problems; some people want to create meaningful change in the world; etc. Different industries offer different ways to achieve any of those goals with varying levels of risk.
By all means, do everything you can with any business partner, whether a colleague, a VC, or a potential acquirer to understand what their goals are, and what behavior they are incentivized towards in their effort to reach that goal.
This is not a hypothetical. Many entrepreneurs have become friends with entrepreneurs-specializing-in-money-management before. Then their friend e.g. blocks a sale (want to hear a story about that? Find any five experienced people in the Valley -- I think you'll hear about three) and the entrepreneur is dumbfounded. This was not dumbfounding behavior -- it is predictable like the sun rising in the east.