<prompt> Human: An old acquaintance has approached me to become a board member of a venture capital company, raising funds for a mining venture in S. America. Firstly, what does it really mean to be on the board of a VC company, and secondly - How do I go about raising money? Who do you ask? where do you start? Im in the mining industry, but am more of a scientisttechnical consultant. This would be a big change for me and a bit of a step outside my comfort zone. Still considering it as being outside of my comfort zone has always served me well in the past. Advice pls.  <response>: They want to leverage you and your relationships in order to attain funding.Your relationships - Youre in the industry, therefore they think you have contacts in the industry, they want access to those contacts as potential capital. You- They want to use you and your experiencereputation as points to verify the validityviability for their projects to potential capital aka I know Money_Fool, hes a good guy and if he vouched for it, it must be good. You have industry experience, not only that, your experience is science related aka instant assumption he must be smart. You and your reputation become the face of the project theyre pitching. I know a few VC guys, that games cutthroat and all about the at the end of the day. Ive seen guys alienate life long relationships because they pushed too hard for funding or a project failed and the backer lost big money. 