VC money can be incredibly damaging to a startup because it increases your options. In finance, optionality is good, in entrepreneurship it is a distraction. To achieve focus and speed, you want fewer options, not more. Even simply parking your money in treasury bills and focusing on your mission is not easy, because the option exists. Necessity is the mother of invention. As Steve Jobs said, you want to "stay hungry, stay foolish" [1], because nothing drives human beings like sheer pain and neediness.

[1] https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/44538/what-does-...