Naval Ravikant on why founders should optimize for control when fundraising

In the clip below from an interview in 2012 with Jason Calacanis on This Week in Startups, Naval reflects on good founders being replaced by “bozo CEOs”.

His tagline at Venture hacks was: “Valuation is temporary. Control is forever.”

He advises founders to optimize for control over pretty much everything else: “The day you lose control, you’re no longer an entrepreneur, you’re an employee.”

Citing the Stanford Prison experiment: “The lesson is that power corrupts. And if someone doesn’t have power over you, they won’t abuse it and they’ll be totally nice and easy to get along with. If they do have power, then you can have issues.”

He also argues that partnering with VCs who will treat you well is way more important than partnering with VCs who can give you good advice:

“I don’t care how brilliant the person is. If they can tell you in one day a month how to run your business, you’re not ready as an entrepreneur.”

Full video: This Week in Startups “Naval Ravikant of AngelList: the new wave of venture capital | E244” (Apr 2012)

P.S. We’ve put together a YouTube playlist with every Naval Ravikant insight we’ve ever shared. You can watch it here: "Best startup advice from Naval Ravikant"