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Rowghani: Raising too much capital early damages startups by removing urgency

Ali Rowghani · 20VC: YC's Ali Rowghani on Leadership Lessons From Steve Jobs, Ed Catmull and Jack Dorsey & The 3 Traits All Truly Successful Leaders Share · Oct 30, 2017 · at 22:40

Ali Rowghani, CEO of YC Continuity Fund and former Twitter COO and Pixar CFO, warns against startups overcapitalizing early in their lifecycle.

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“There are many startups that actually, I think have been damaged simply because of the amount of capital that they've been able to raise. You know, I was a CFO earlier in my career and you need enough capital to be able to take risks and make mistakes, et cetera. But I think if you have too much capital and It saps a company of urgency, of energy, it makes the company more lazy, et cetera, until the point where you're able to build the maturity and the structures and the governance and the leadership, et cetera, they can kind of deal with that.”

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