🚗 Follow On: The Car, the Engine & the Shared Journey: A VC’s Take on Empowering Founders While Focusing on the Bigger Map

One of the things I love about analogies is how they help us unpack complexity. And if the first post was about the kid in the back seat asking “Are we there yet?”, this one is about everything happening under the hood.

Because a car doesn’t move without an engine. A journey doesn’t happen without planning. And a company doesn’t grow without founders and teams building something real.

For the entrepreneur, the journey is the work:

• Designing the engine

• Building the product

• Hiring the team

• Planning the route

• Figuring out who will pay for what they’re creating

• Turning a dream into a company

This is their mission. This is their identity. This is what they wake up for every morning.

They’re not obsessing about “arrival.” They’re obsessing about building something great.

But for the VC, the perspective is different — and it should be.

Not because VCs don’t care about the product or the team. Not because they lack passion or empathy. But because the business model is different.

Founders build companies. VCs build returns.

Yes, VCs may bring expertise. Yes, they may help the company grow. Yes, they may genuinely care about the founder and the mission.

But the business of the VC is clear:

👉 Deliver high economic returns to LPs. 

👉 Drive IRRs and multiples that justify the risk. 

👉 Create outcomes strong enough to raise the next fund.

So while the entrepreneur is focused on the engine, the craft, the product, the team… The VC is focused on the destination.

For the founder, asking “Are we there yet?” can feel like a distraction. For the VC, it’s the core of the job.

Two perspectives. Both valid. Both necessary. But absolutely not the same.

And that’s why for the VC, understanding fair value based on calibration, optionality, PWERM, OPM, and breakpoints matters so much. These tools translate the founder’s world into the investor’s world. They turn the journey into economics. They show where we are on the map — and what that means for value today.

If you want to go deeper into fair value, OPM, PWERM, calibration, breakpoints, cap tables, and how all of this ties together into real clarity for investors and finance teams — reach out to us at VCM.

We built VCM to be the platform for cap table intelligence and fair value clarity.