Raise and Rise Quotes

“The overall data shows that more than twice the money flows into venture capital from LPs than comes back to them in a given year.
I wanted to hold onto something positive from this industry—after all, I’ve met a few brilliant people in it—but looking at the data, it’s hard, if not impossible.
In a Freudian sense, it's worth remembering that sometimes a cigar is just a cigar—not everything has a deeper psychological meaning.
VCs have made it look like magic, but the illusion disappears once you turn on the lights.
At its core, venture capital isn’t as much a unique asset class as it is a troubled one. The industry survives by injecting more and more capital each year, while leaving the majority of limited partners stuck at the losing end of a pay-your-bid auction.”
― Victoria Silchenko, Raise and Rise: Funding Sources for Your Startup in the Era of Digital Transformation & Blockchain

“Let me stress this: there are good and bad reasons for securitization.
At a macro-economic level, when done right, securitization can be a key source of financing across all stages of the supply chain, enhancing market liquidity and driving the development of new markets and products.
The problem? Banks and hedge funds love to exploit their power—using securitization as a tool to offload worthless assets onto an unsuspecting public.”
― Victoria Silchenko, Raise and Rise: Funding Sources for Your Startup in the Era of Digital Transformation & Blockchain

“The saddest reality is that 30% of the clothes produced worldwide today are never sold.
Now add to that the fact that up to 50% of food produced is never eaten—it simply gets thrown away.
This should make you pause and reflect on one of the most disturbing examples of massive market inefficiency happening across every wealthy country—from the United States to Sweden (the home of H&M).”
― Victoria Silchenko, Raise and Rise: Funding Sources for Your Startup in the Era of Digital Transformation & Blockchain

“Today.
We.
Have.
Everything.
You see, we now live in an age where markets—especially those with high purchasing power—are overserved to the point of absurdity.
Let’s start with the fact that we now have over 4 million apps for just about everything—from monitoring your health and tracking your pet’s habits to making harmonica sounds with an iPhone in your mouth or using the chat app Yo—which exists solely to send your friends the word "Yo."
The latter, by the way, managed to raise $1 million in seed funding.”
― Victoria Silchenko, Raise and Rise: Funding Sources for Your Startup in the Era of Digital Transformation & Blockchain

“Let’s face it—in the age of social media, opinions have become commodities, traded at high frequency with no real impact.”
― Victoria Silchenko, Raise and Rise: Funding Sources for Your Startup in the Era of Digital Transformation & Blockchain

“Now, if you live in the U.S., keep in mind that the average annual interest rate for a credit card ranges between 15-19%—while store credit cards and banks like Wells Fargo charge 25% or more.

This means you’d have to generate returns comparable to the best-performing family offices—entities run by some of the most highly educated investment professionals in the world, whose full-time job is managing wealth.
So, next time a VC thoughtfully suggests you bootstrap your business with a credit card, tell him to take a hike.”
― Victoria Silchenko, Raise and Rise: Funding Sources for Your Startup in the Era of Digital Transformation & Blockchain

“I believe that in the 21st century, we need to redefine ownership, innovation, and capital—because if we don’t, we’ll soon wake up in a modern-day feudal society. And no, I’m not kidding.

In the vast majority of countries, an average citizen can’t invest in a privately-held company—yet private equity, including direct investments, now makes up the largest share of family office portfolios, serving exclusively high-net-worth individuals.”
― Victoria Silchenko, Raise and Rise: Funding Sources for Your Startup in the Era of Digital Transformation & Blockchain

“You might well ask—what now then, shall I stop looking for capital?
Haha, that’s like asking whether you should get married or not—as they say, you’ll be damned if you do and damned if you don’t.”
― Victoria Silchenko, Raise and Rise: Funding Sources for Your Startup in the Era of Digital Transformation & Blockchain

“The human tendency to focus solely on successful outcomes is well-known in psychology as “survivor bias.”
In entrepreneurship, survivor bias isn’t just present—it’s the name of the game.
You must be overoptimistic.”
― Victoria Silchenko, Raise and Rise: Funding Sources for Your Startup in the Era of Digital Transformation & Blockchain

“When a venture capitalist says, "We are now one team," take it with a grain of salt—and remember, his primary job is to make sure that you do yours.”
― Victoria Silchenko, Raise and Rise: Funding Sources for Your Startup in the Era of Digital Transformation & Blockchain

“Most of us eagerly celebrate yet another mega deal, cheering for a founder who landed a venture capital fund and secured a sizeable investment.
Now, let’s pause and think about what that actually means. It signals that our fellow entrepreneur has officially taken on… yes, a liability burden.”
― Victoria Silchenko, Raise and Rise: Funding Sources for Your Startup in the Era of Digital Transformation & Blockchain

“The general rule of thumb for a seed-stage round is to preserve at least 80% of your equity pie.
In other words, before you hit the marketplace, don’t sell more than 20% of your company’s ownership.”
― Victoria Silchenko, Raise and Rise: Funding Sources for Your Startup in the Era of Digital Transformation & Blockchain

“In entrepreneurial finance, the asymmetry between what needs to be backed and what actually gets financed—often driven by purely speculative expectations—is truly remarkable.
Case in point: CB Insights has been doing an admirable job publishing its "mortality reports," analyzing why some of the most promising and heavily vetted startups fail. And for years, the number one reason for failure among VC-backed startups has remained the same:
There was no market need.”
― Victoria Silchenko, Raise and Rise: Funding Sources for Your Startup in the Era of Digital Transformation & Blockchain

“Let me simplify—it means we hardly see reality as it is. Instead, our perception is shaped by our brains—and possibly our hearts too.
Not long ago, I came across a study revealing that the heart is about 60 times stronger than the brain in an electrical field and more than 100 times stronger in a magnetic field.
So, if you ever find yourself wondering whether we’ve all lost our minds, just remember—brains are overrated anyway.
But then, it begs the question—have we lost our connection to heart intelligence too?
Possibly.”
― Victoria Silchenko, Raise and Rise: Funding Sources for Your Startup in the Era of Digital Transformation & Blockchain

“How can you be useful to the world if your main concern is how to become “fundable”? How can you create impactful products or meaningful services if, instead of focusing on market needs—rooted in social, economic, and environmental realities—you’re fixated on keeping investors happy, those who chase abnormal returns and easy exits?

How did capital, once an instrument to address the world’s most pressing environmental and social challenges, become an end in itself—the most traded asset rather than the most transformative tool? When, in fact, it was meant to be the perfect resource for entrepreneurs to solve real problems and make our lives just a bit easier and healthier?
If anything, problems aren’t stop signs—they’re wake-up calls for those with problem-solving skills. They also reflect the depth of our awareness and intelligence.”
― Victoria Silchenko, Raise and Rise: Funding Sources for Your Startup in the Era of Digital Transformation & Blockchain

“Why do we dismiss lottery winners, yet worship those who build wealth by capitalizing on capital itself? The difference is becoming increasingly invisible.”
― Victoria Silchenko, Raise and Rise: Funding Sources for Your Startup in the Era of Digital Transformation & Blockchain

“Here, I must say that some terminology in the language of finance is slightly misleading. Uber’s “loss” largely means heavy investments in other businesses and stock-based compensation stemming from the company's initial public offering.

Unsurprisingly, Travis Kalanick, Uber’s co-founder, sold nearly $1 billion in company shares the moment Uber’s IPO lockup period (read: the timeframe when you can’t sell your shares) was over. Duh.
When a company files for an IPO instead of bankruptcy, the IPO should be renamed a bailout—because modern business solutions require modern business jargon. #sarcasm”
― Victoria Silchenko, Raise and Rise: Funding Sources for Your Startup in the Era of Digital Transformation & Blockchain

“How on Earth was Uber, with its reported $10 billion loss from operations since 2016, and other gigantic creatures of the Internet Economy, able to flip the tedious “viability-profitability-expansion” route into an entirely new direction—“viability-expansion (maybe) profitability”?

Elementary—by ensuring consistent financing or, simply put, by having access to capital on the fly and turning their business models into platforms instead of building traditional pipes, so that acquiring new businesses is not a question—it is the answer.”
― Victoria Silchenko, Raise and Rise: Funding Sources for Your Startup in the Era of Digital Transformation & Blockchain

“For years, his biggest strength was his ability to mesmerize even savvy people with sales pitches for new, but sometimes flawed, products.” The Wall Street Journal wrote that in 1993 about a then 38-year-old Steve Jobs.

Today’s innovators—the likes of Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos—are salespeople too, constantly promoting and pitching their ventures to all the right people. And it’s not just customers or strategic partners—that’s what their marketing departments are for. It’s the people in the financial industry: venture capitalists, bankers, and Wall Street guys.
Did I get your attention?”
― Victoria Silchenko, Raise and Rise: Funding Sources for Your Startup in the Era of Digital Transformation & Blockchain

“Let me ask you a pretty straightforward question—how would you define entrepreneurship in one simple word?
The answer is: SALE.
And how would you define entrepreneurship in two simple words?
No Sale.”
― Victoria Silchenko, Raise and Rise: Funding Sources for Your Startup in the Era of Digital Transformation & Blockchain

“We live in times of an abundance of options, thanks to the Internet, which has turned the world into one big, dazzling marketplace with multinational supply chains. According to one assessment, a simple cup of coffee involves 29 firms across 18 countries.”
― Victoria Silchenko, Raise and Rise: Funding Sources for Your Startup in the Era of Digital Transformation & Blockchain

“You live in an era where raising funding has turned out to be the most important skill of all.”
― Victoria Silchenko, Raise and Rise: Funding Sources for Your Startup in the Era of Digital Transformation & Blockchain

“The world is changed by our example, not by our opinion or a constant stream of rants on social media—that’s my own mantra. Beyond the painfully obvious fact that too many of us are busy counting Facebook likes, just imagine how many of humanity’s problems could be solved if each of us started making small daily decisions based on that innate sense of rightness we humans are wired with.”
― Victoria Silchenko, Raise and Rise: Funding Sources for Your Startup in the Era of Digital Transformation & Blockchain

“In all seriousness—what is really happening (and I have plenty of brain-damaging data to prove it) is that finance has become a tool for getting money from productive businesses instead of getting money into them.
If anyone is paying attention to the current stock market, you might reflect on the fact that margin debt is at a record high, and stock market capitalization stands at 176% of U.S. GDP”
― Victoria Silchenko, Raise and Rise: Funding Sources for Your Startup in the Era of Digital Transformation & Blockchain

“I believe that any meaningful change requires initiating the kind of conversations that make people uncomfortable. I believe in asking questions – and searching for the truth. I have questions and would rather “have questions that can't be answered than answers that can't be questioned,” paraphrasing Richard Feynman, a quantum physicist and Nobel prize winner who lived here in Los Angeles.”
― Victoria Silchenko, Raise and Rise: Funding Sources for Your Startup in the Era of Digital Transformation & Blockchain

“Simply put, we need plenty of risk capital flowing into the real economy—into real startups solving real problems. If we live in a world where small businesses—the true engines of the economy and job creation—are dying faster than they’re being born, it raises a critical question: What’s wrong with a financing system that’s supposed to provide the oxygen for new ventures?
Do you hear me, derivatives traders?”
― Victoria Silchenko, Raise and Rise: Funding Sources for Your Startup in the Era of Digital Transformation & Blockchain

“Simply put, we need plenty of risk capital flowing into the real economy and real startups solving real problems. You see, if we’re living in an environment where small businesses—the real engines of the economy and job creators—are dying faster than they are being born, you start to wonder what’s wrong with a financing system that is meant to deliver the oxygen for new ventures. Do you hear me, derivatives’ traders? By the end of 2019, those guys scored $559 trillion – which would be equal to almost seven times the world total GDP that same year. What can go wrong?”
― victoria silchenko , Raise and Rise: Funding Sources for Your Startup in the Era of Digital Transformation & Blockchain

“Simply put, we need plenty of risk capital flowing into the real economy and real startups solving real problems. You see, if we’re living in an environment where small businesses—the real engines of the economy and job creators—are dying faster than they are being born, you start to wonder what’s wrong with a financing system that is meant to deliver the oxygen for new ventures.”
― Victoria Silchenko, Raise and Rise: Funding Sources for Your Startup in the Era of Digital Transformation & Blockchain

“In our new economy, where tech behemoths rule, reality is being virtualized, and everything is on track to have a paired digital twin, how do we inspire new founders to become the human dynamos capable of driving meaningful innovation—rather than just churning out useless apps and digital toys or, worse, creating creepy technologies designed solely to intrude on and control our lives?
What will it take to return to the noble idea of "entrepreneurial capitalism"—the kind fueled by bold, go-getting minds like Henry Ford, Walt Disney, Nikola Tesla (an immigrant from Serbia), and Andrew Carnegie (an immigrant from Scotland)?”
― Victoria Silchenko, Raise and Rise: Funding Sources for Your Startup in the Era of Digital Transformation & Blockchain

“Amazon is not just delivering – it is now moving in with us.”
― Victoria Silchenko, Raise and Rise: Funding Sources for Your Startup in the Era of Digital Transformation & Blockchain