Here’s something that Gideon Yu told me. Gideon is a partner at Khosla Ventures, previously CFO of Facebook, partner at Sequoia Capital, CFO of Youtube. 

He said that when building a startup, you should do everything within your power to grow the company and build the product and valuation and gain traction and social proof, completely independent of any dilution issues. 

As I think more about it, this is really great advice. It’s natural for entrepreneurs to not want to give up any equity in “their baby” and if they have to do so for investment, they do so grudgingly. Rather, what the entrepreneur should focus on is building out the product, growing the company with as much speed as possible, and investors will come knocking at your door - you won’t be beholden to the VC world.