Right, and from all my friends who did take VC money: it's an incredibly demanding period of your life, a large proportion of which isn't about delivering on your vision. You're gonna learn a lot about office space leases, accounting, fundraising, customer pitches, etc. You're gonna have impatient VCs on your board, with the power to fire you, breathing down your neck. You won't be relaxing much and won't be spending that much time with family and non-work friends.
It's a valuable experience with a lot of potential upside in the long haul - but let's not pretend that it's less taxing than a cozy 9-to-5 tech job where your boss might ask you to update your OKRs once in a while.
Usually by the time VCs have the power to fire you, you have so many different investors that they cannot really do it without some massively difficult political manouvering, at least in software.
It's a valuable experience with a lot of potential upside in the long haul - but let's not pretend that it's less taxing than a cozy 9-to-5 tech job where your boss might ask you to update your OKRs once in a while.