Andy has a great post on his blog about negotiating term sheets. In it he also alludes to what I think is one of the most important things you can do in business - forming a network of people who want you to succeed.

…life is long and you don’t know whether this company is going to make it (in fact odds are against you)….so if you want to do another company, you want the group of people who want to support you to be as big as possible. Those people who support you when you’ve got nothing –who took a risk on the company not because of the company but because of you…those are the people you want to keep happy and close to you.

It’s all too easy to trade off the short term for the long term and it seems that people have a tendency to do that.