"Venture Capitalists, who are these freaks?"<p>Answer: These are the freaks who took a nascent computer industry once dominated by a few mega-companies and, beginning some 40 years ago, made possible something that we today know as a "startup" by which young and otherwise untested whippersnappers might avail themselves of their capital in order to build vast new enterprises that have managed to transform all of world commerce and who, with their capital, built such a tremendous infrastructure in what we know today as the internet that young and untested whippersnappers can presume to launch new ventures under the illusion that no capital of any kind is required or, if it is, it can be so minimal as to come solely from a few friends or family members. These freaks are really nobodies in the grander scheme now that we have moved into an era where risk capital is no longer required to launch and build startups and where every young and untested whippersnapper will be more than willing to put up that $100K or $200K of his own money to take that whirl with some new and untested concept to see if it will fly. And if that young and untested whippersnapper should lose his money in taking that whirl, it is really no loss because only soulless people care when they lose money while those who are above mere money are too busy having fun.<p>I'm sorry - I would hardly classify myself as a sycophant for venture capitalists or other investors (my specialty is representing founders and their early-stage companies) but this piece is really beyond the pale. Freaks? Soulless? This really is pure garbage, whatever good points are otherwise hidden within the broad ideas that founders can and do benefit from managing their talents and resources wisely so as to lessen or avoid dilutive hits from taking in investment money unwisely. Whatever might be good here is, for me, lost among what I see as a mean-spiritedness in the presentation.