[brainflake]

The simple answer is if you IPO at a certain price and declare you don't plan on growing at all, then nobody will participate in your offering or buy your shares in the open market. It's just a fact of life that as a public company you need to prove to your shareholders that next year your shares will be worth more than right now. Otherwise outside investors have no reason to invest in your company rather than keeping their money in a savings account (or a low risk alternative). The same basic premise applies to VC investments.

That's not to say that a patio11-style business is wrong, just that it's very different. It's personal preference if you've started the business and there's no right or wrong way.

[Zigurd]

Even worse, once you've convinced investors that you're an essential component of the internet and you get a monster valuation, the only solutions worth looking at are ones that will fulfill a destiny that recedes with every passing day. Who is going to be the CEO who says "fuggeddaboudit, we ain't never gonna be Facebook. Learn to live with Twitter as the unfiltered (and therefore troll-infested) breaking news utility and whatever valuation that brings us."