Duration is a feature, not a bug. We partner with founders for the long term, and we optimize for one thing: the outcome — a public company that is a workhorse, where people are proud to work and build products people swear by instead of swear at.
The outcome is the horse; the terms are the cart. Put the cart before the horse and you go nowhere.
Pile the cart too high — large equity stakes taken in the name of shareholder primacy — and the workhorse cannot pull. A large share of a company no one can build is a share of nothing.
The R in our CORE Guiding Principles is Rationale — we do the right things for the right reasons, and we take the high road by focusing on the outcome first. A lot of venture capital does the wrong things for the wrong reasons, and it is recorded in history by the term sheets.
Terms still matter — their purpose is to align stakeholders around the founder's vision and incentivize the behavior that executes toward the outcome. That is why we back founders with conviction, toward the outcome.
If you're in a zero-sum venture game, you might be in private equity.