To be successful in their job, by necessity, VCs are friendly and personable. So friendly that it is easy to be lulled into thinking you are forging a real friendship and that they can step outside their fiduciary selves and provide good unbiased advice to a startup founder who needs good unbiased advice a lot. But it is vital the startup founder keep in mind that the VC has a job to do and they are driven first and foremost by that job even in the advice they provide.

Shikhar Ghosh says 7.5 out of 10 venture-backed startups fail. Why do so many startups fail? It’s because they run out of money, but why do they run out of money? My experience of founding and running nine startups over the course of 35 years guided me to five things that every startup founder needs to focus on and get right, right away.

A tech startup—where tech is short for deep (or hard or tough) technology—is one that is solving a big problem for a (hopefully) big market with a solution based on either hardware, software or both, whose technology involves challenges to build and is probably patentable. Many investors specifically favor deep tech because they can clear out a defensible market space unique to them. Examples of deep tech investors include MIT’s The Engine and Hyperplane in Boston. It’s a category that is growing: Investment in deep tech startups is rising 20% a year and reached $18 billion in 2018.

Lots of entrepreneurs go through very tough times, and people marvel at the grit that makes them able to withstand that. In my case, my entrepreneurial grit came from being disabled and a cancer survivor at the age of 16.