Jim McCarthy: What conventional wisdom is totally wrong?

“I think that all entrepreneurs should challenge the conventional wisdom that you need a VC or a big investor to get started. First of all, I don’t like that because it indicates a permission-seeking mindset and as an entrepreneur, you can’t have that. You got to be able to take the resources that you can pull together on your own to get started now, and that’s the most important thing. The second reason I don’t like it is that businesses tend to spend up to the resources or money that they have. If you got a million, you spend a million; if you got a 100 thousand, you’d be surprised at how often you can do the same amount with a 100 thousand than you can with a million. It’s expensive to take money early on and you don’t necessarily have to do it. It’s conventional wisdom I think we should forget.” — Jim McCarthy