Hi Brad, thanks for sharing these thoughts.
As finance manager for a startup (Europe based) I always believed in the burn cap (never called it that though). To me it was obvious, as it was what made sense as we closed our Seed round and were building towards our Series A. It also provided me with a quantitative argument to bring up at management meetings as a clear indicator we were (or not) performing in that quarter vs milestones.

We calculated our burn cap for 18 months, as that made sense for us and we had 2 base scenarios — a) takes us to break-even with no need to raise again b) was a sustainable growth rate, but requires further input of capital to meet milestones.

My point here is to me this was obvious, cause I cared about the money that was invested in our business and our shareholders. Now that I am sitting on the investor-side, I simply do not see this attitude — its like burning cash and raising bridge round every 6–8 months is expected.

Don’t really have a lesson here — just venting frustration I guess