[solatic]

> Never forget that absolutely everything you do is for your customers. Make every decision — even decisions about whether to expand the business, raise money, or promote someone — according to what’s best for your customers.

Right, this isn't really about whether or not you take growth funding. This is about minimalism and focus.

The fact that some people who take venture funds see fit to use those funds in a vain way, doesn't mean that you're forced to use that kind of funding in a vain way. Indeed, you're more likely to succeed if you use the funding modestly, with humility, focused on where it can provide the most business growth.

[ilamont]

Never forget that absolutely everything you do is for your customers

Hard disagree. I certainly want to keep my customers satisfied and provide them with value, and they (along with employees and partners) are absolutely necessary to the success and continuation of the business.

But the number one consideration in any business are the needs of the owner(s), which may include financial, a desire to grow the business, family considerations, physical health, mental health, and many intangibles related to self worth, discovery, personal growth, creativity, and community.

If you can't find a balance, the business ends or gets sold. Or, the owner suffers damage, sometimes irreparable.

[bryans]

> Hard disagree. I certainly want to keep my customers satisfied and provide them with value, and they (along with employees and partners) are absolutely necessary to the success and continuation of the business.

If your customers are only satisfied, that means you end up spending significantly more on acquisition and retention, because nobody is going to be rabidly loyal enough to your business to extol its virtues to their friends and family and colleagues and on social media. That hobbles your growth and virtually eliminates the potential for word-of-mouth. People don't tweet about how a product "is satisfactory and provides an adequate amount of value."

I'd recommend checking out an amazing talk on exceeding customer expectations[1] by a Seattle business coach named Brad Worthley. And I get it, anybody (other than John Madden) with "coach" in their title is almost universally someone to avoid, particularly when they start their talk by mentioning the books they've written, but this guy really does understand how those customer dynamics work. He ELI5s the whole topic, along with excellent anecdotes to show each of the concepts in action.

And I assure you, things work exactly how he describes. If you bend over backward for them, your customers will take care of you. But if you treat them as a "necessity for the continuation of the business," they're not going to care about you at all, which means they'll leave you the minute something better or cheaper comes along -- or the first time you make a mistake.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=40eyo7cgJ7w&t=4m30s

[ilamont]

> And I assure you, things work exactly how he describes. If you bend over backward for them, your customers will take care of you.

Do you own a real business, incorporated with real products, employees, P/L, etc.? If so, I would really like to hear your experience bending over backwards for customers and having the resulting social media and customer buzz solve everything. That's not the way things work in my admittedly limited experience (2 companies, one failed, one ongoing).

I haven't heard of Brad, but the thing that makes me hesitate is not the "coach" but rather the origin - Seattle - which is where a lot of the "obsess over customers" dogma originates.

[bryans]

You're just being inflammatory now. Questioning whether or not I have business experience, concocting some arbitrary definition of "real" business, pretending I said social media "solves everything," and then declaring that you've got it figured out better than the whole of Seattle's population just because you have a failed business and one "ongoing" -- which doesn't exactly scream "wildly successful using my current strategy."

Toward the end of 2020 I consulted with a handful of startups. Among many topics, my primary advice was to be as genuine as possible in all situations and to become "professional thankers." Universally, the ones who took that advice saw their growth skyrocket in 2021, while the ones who didn't are still wondering why they can't get traction. And they're going to keep wondering until they figure out that the personal connection between yourself, your employees and your customers is paramount, because that's how societies work constructively and successfully.

Whereas your owner-first approach is how we end up with every major company on the planet paying virtually no taxes, and selling customer data, and sometimes even literally colluding and plotting against users' mental health and well-being, never realizing that they'd be so much more profitable and personally enriched if they would only give a damn about their fellow humans.

[tnzk]

> The fact that some people who take venture funds see fit to use those funds in a vain way, doesn't mean that you're forced to use that kind of funding in a vain way.

Most of them force it actually so they believe invested to the right company. The best VCs won't, not all VCs aren't though.

[horsawlarway]

> Most of them force it actually

This is my experience. I literally watched the VC board at a previous company get mad at my then CEO for not spending their cash quickly enough.

Moreover - he was hardly the most fiscally responsible to begin with - exorbitant class A office space, expensive contractors, fully stocked kitchen and snacks, game systems and bean bag chairs in break rooms. Paying customers? Nah - not so much.

But they wanted him to spend FASTER. "you need to adjust spending to be at around a 6 month runway - currently you're at 18. That's too high - spend more!"

My thoughts on the process are two-fold

1. A short runway and high expenses offer opportunities for those VCs to double down in the inevitable next round sooner, at rates more favorable to them

2. They are gambling - they want to either hit the jackpot or bust. They do not want to sit at the table all day (for example, by running slow growing self-sustaining company)

[solatic]

> But they wanted him to spend FASTER. "you need to adjust spending to be at around a 6 month runway - currently you're at 18. That's too high - spend more!"

1. Spending more is easy, and it doesn't require exorbitant parties or perks. You tell marketing to increase their spend by sponsoring high-end conferences and buying out street-level ad space along major thoroughfares and transit. It gets quite easy to burn seven, even eight figures this way.

2. Of course the investors want the company to have a shorter runway, and it's not even about reinvesting in the next round. It's about control. The lower the financial pressure on the company, the less power the financiers have. The higher the financial pressure on the company, the more the financiers are needed to help ensure continuity.

[mattgreenrocks]

Admittedly, I don't think about these CEO-type issues much, so my opinion is not worth even two cents here, but that loss of autonomy in how to structure and run what was believed to be one's own business sounds horrible. I understand what VC funding can do, but delegating those decisions to people not completely invested in the outcome would keep me awake at night.

It explains the behavior of VC-funded firms well though: they elected to receive VC funding, and they flaunt the results of that funding to justify it to others and themselves. It's part of the game. How will others know that you are successful if you are not showing it over and over?

[horsawlarway]

If you're interested, I think this article does a good job of laying out some of the realities of being a founder who has taken VC capital:

https://reactionwheel.net/2021/11/your-boards-of-directors-i...