My biggest black-pill as a VC is that the concept of "value-add" as an investor is mostly BS The best founders don't need your advice. In fact, if a founder asks for and regularly takes your advice, this is probably a negative signal Looking back at 8 years of investing, I can count the counter-examples to this rule on one hand (i.e. successful investments where I feel like I genuinely added value). And in almost every case they were web 2 founders who needed help on web 3 specific stuff like token economics, TGE, etc. But even here, the best founders generally figure it out by themselves. The opposite is true too: the companies I spent the most time on didn't end up succeeding It's nice for us as VCs to do calls with founders and discuss strategy, come up with product ideas or whatever. It soothes our egos and makes us feel all nice and warm inside. But the harsh reality is that if you, a VC, splitting your time between hundreds of companies and sectors, are able to come up with something that the entrepreneur spending 24hrs a day thinking about their business genuinely hasn't considered, that's a massive red flag This realisation, while stark, doesn't rly change my behaviour or time spend as an investor going forward. I'll still do my best to support the founders we back however I can because: a) I love it b) I believe that's what we sign up for when we invest The main actionable takeaway for me is that while spit-balling and ideating with a founder can be stimulating and a lot of fun, their need/willingness to take my advice is likely to be negatively correlated to their odds of success. Important to remember this when we get over-excited during DD