Vinod Khosla: 70-80% Of VCs Add Negative Value To Startups

Khosla's notorious TechCrunch interview in which he argued, from the perspective of someone who had run a successful venture firm for decades, that most VCs actively subtract value from the startups they invest in — through bad advice, board interference, and the mistaking of conviction for expertise. The interview is short and quotable and remains one of the more honest accounts of how the venture industry actually works. For product direction the relevance is oblique: understanding how capital flows and behaves is useful even when the specific relationship is not one your organisation has. Pair with Horowitz for the founder-side view of the same dynamic.