An entrepreneur I respect: “I had a VC in my office today pitching us on taking their money and he said something interesting; he talked about our profitability as a species of strangulation, in that we have willingly choked off a lot of potential growth expenses to continue to bootstrap. He’s right. But there’s nothing like the discipline of fueling hires thru cashflow to keep you honest…”

He’s right? Must have been some MBA-programmed associate who tried that line out on my guy. Sometimes I’m embarrassed to call myself a venture capitalist, when I hear other VCs talk like that. Building businesses isn’t a zero-sum game, where there’s only just so much business and if you don’t get all of it, right now and without regard to operating or gross margins, you will never get it.

I recommend reading Joe Nocera’s column about Beliefnet in today’s New York Times (subscription might be required, but I can’t figure out the current policy on URLs), for a more rational view on how business gets done. The lead sentence: “I found the Chapter 11 period exhilarating.”

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