I am the founder of CribSocial.com, a site that encourages social interaction through activities between people of similar interests. It has only been a month since the launch and I have a relatively small budget for the marketing. Currently I am seeing small linear growth with my marketing budget. My questions is how far one should take their company on their own before turning to venture capital for further growth. My intuition would be to get funding as soon as possible, but I have heard few stories suggesting to wait as long as possible before going to VCs. Primarily because VCs like to see a product developed and launched in real market before risking their money and secondly the sooner you take venture capital, larger the share of your company you'll end up giving. But at the same time I don't want to lose the opportunity of significant growth. I don't know how to find the right balance between saving the company's share and growing rapidly with venture capital. Are there any stats or rule of thumb which indicate at what stage of the company one should think about venture capital. I would appreciate to get some feed back from slashdot members who might have had experience with startups and venture capital