One of the challenges in raising money and dealing with money in a firm is that it's not just the valuation or how much you raise that matters, but all the terms that come with the money.

For example, I was chairman of a software business in London growing rapidly. We didn't have any outside money in the business at all. For the first time, we got significant interest from VCs, and the VC we ended up going with who was interested came in with a term sheet. There was a minority investment, but one of the terms of the investment was that they wanted to have control over the next fundraising.

It was very interesting going through that with our CEO and founder.

He had never seen a fund like this before, but as he started to read through this (we got really good advice, and we had a great lawyer), he came to the view that, even though they don't have board control, even though they're a minority shareholder if they have this provision, they will control the business because they can control when the next funding happens.

So, at the end of the day, we turned the money down, and we were desperate for it.

We ended up having to look for other money.

We ended up bringing in two family offices that were amazing, had great terms, and didn't have these kinds of really stringent conditions on them. We had a great relationship with them. I'm sure it would have worked out with the private equity venture capital firm, but just knowing that you give up control when you give up the next funding round was critical.

And so, on all these terms, you must be careful when raising money.