“I’m going to start raising money for my startup,” a student explained as she chatted with me at the end of one of my entrepreneurship classes. “You mentioned you’ve raised money for startups in the past. Before I begin fundraising, what’s the most important thing I should know about venture capitalists?”

The student surely wanted a constructive, actionable answer she could use to help her with the unfamiliar and complex process of fundraising. But she asked for my advice just as I’d finished a two-plus hour class in front of a bunch of Gen Z-ers. It’s an entire generation that learns best by watching 30 seconds video clips, so I was probably in the wrong mindset to answer such a complex question. Rather than giving her the thoughtful, detailed answer she needed, I gave something more akin to a pithy, tweetable quip.

“Venture capitalists will never care about you or your company,” I told her. “That’s the most important thing to know. Once you understand VCs don’t care about you and your company, everything else becomes a lot easier.”

The relationship between VCs and founders

On its surface, the answer I gave wasn’t great. I can admit that much. I’d just categorized an entire profession as, basically, a bunch of selfish, heartless villains.

No, it wasn’t my proudest moment as an educator. Theoretically, as an educator, I’m supposed to be objective. But I’m also a longtime founder, and every founder who’s tried raising venture capital holds some level of a grudge against VCs.

How could we not? After all, at some point, every founder has surely felt wronged by a VC in an unforgivable way. It could have been something as mundane as a simple rejection that felt undeserved. It could have been something as bastardly as the founder being removed as CEO by a VC who’d gained too much control. Or it could have been something in between. Whatever the case, as much as founders and VCs need each other to operate, they’re also natural antagonists.