[rzodkiew]

Whole VC industry is set up on pushing one simple lie: that you need VCs to create a successful company. Everything else is marketing endeavours to try to sell this convincingly.

It's all the capitalists realising that to make software you don't need no factories anymore, which means much lower initial investment. So the marketing machine had to start and created this bizarre ecosystem of hyper growth, fuelled in kinda' pyramid fashion (all the money that is pumped into startups is spent on services provided by other startups they've financed).

The whole system attracts money hungry teenagers, which can be convinced that ethics are an obstacle to be overcome, and we end up with what we have today.

[simonebrunozzi]

Well, but... You'd still have to pick your poison.

Growing slowly without raising large amounts of capital might mean "some" success, but you might eventually be eaten up by a well-funded competitor.

Pick your poison, they say.

[rzodkiew]

It's all about what you define as a success.

Personally, I think that owner of a bakery on a corner of my street that is visited by all the locals is successful. Is that a success as measured by the VCs? Probably not. Pinboard is an example of that in tech.

Also, yeah raising capital is helpful if you can do it in a smart way, and use that as a leverage to continue what you are doing. That usually means not listening to the VCs, as their goal is for you to grow as fast as you can and keep raising bigger rounds, so they can report how great of investors they are, not for you to build a sustainable (successful) business. You can see that replayed over and over.

Is Whatsapp successful? It was definitely raising quite a bit of capital, but still ended up being eaten by a well-funded competitor. I'd say that when you have VCs on your board who will actively push you to sell, so they can register profit, it increases chances of you being swallowed, by someone bigger. Unless you're saying that being eaten up, means outcompeted and pushed towards bankruptcy.

[sjg007]

You don't really need VCs, you need Bezos to run you a tab. In fact I don't know why Amazon and AWS don't do this. The tab should have some leeway obviously with AWS taking on some risk but it seems like a no brainer.