VCs' Barrier Questions: A Short-Sighted Approach to Startup Funding

Forest Bai, former co-founder of Foresight Ventures, has spoken out against a common practice in venture capital. According to him, top VCs often ask startups about product barriers and how users will make money, which he believes are foolish questions.

Bai argues that software has no inherent technical barriers, and that companies with large language models also have no barriers, otherwise, they wouldn't be competing with each other. He uses the example of Coca-Cola, which can maintain its market share without changing its formula, demonstrating what constitutes a barrier.

Bai emphasizes that honesty applies not only to people but also to objective things, and that founders rely on an athlete-like will and killer judgment rather than intelligence or experience. He believes that asking startups for guarantees is short-sighted speculation, as no company can guarantee that everyone makes money.