Once companies take money from venture capitalists, they are committed to aiming for an exit. A typical venture fund is a partnership with a ten-year time horizon. Most of the investments are made within the first two to three years, with some money reserved for additional investment in the companies that are most promising. Once an entrepreneur takes money from a venture capitalist, he or she is promising to sell or go public within the lifetime of the fund. Yet VCs know that the vast majority of their deals will fail. Jon Oringer, the founder and CEO of Shutterstock, put it well in his advice to entrepreneurs: “What venture capital firms do is spread some number of millions of dollars to some number of companies. They’re not really rooting for every single one. All they need is for a few of them to succeed. It’s the way the model works. They have a totally different risk profile than you do. This is your only game in town. For the venture capital firm, it’s one of a hundred games in town.”