[EnKopVand]

I think it’s a little unfair to call it greed because of how the world operates. Dumped down a little the path for a successful company in the west is to have founders create a small company with a great culture that cultivates growth through a great product. Eventually bigger capital notices the rapid growth and invests, typically letting current and coming employees buy options at the same rate they do because they want to keep the culture until the IPO. Eventually the company has grown enough that it is now a large or even enterprise company while skipping all the steps in between because of the rapid growth, and with all the challenges that come with the that, and then the IPO launches. Talented capital will launch lower than they could, so that they can IPO at 100 and then truly sell out at 400-500 (made up numbers to give you the idea) a couple of years later where the company becomes a truly public company.

During those years the founders and much of the talent are very likely to leave the company. Partly because working for an enterprise wasn’t what they signed up for, but mainly because the rapid growth has likely stagnated, which means that you can get so much more out of your time building something new.

Your time is limited and how you get to spend it is directly tied to your wealth. Why would you waste either on something that doesn’t grow when you could be growing your wealth 40% a month on something else?

Maybe it’s greed, but it’s also how you play our system.

The only weird part about it all is why we aren’t teaching children financial impact and how to maximise it in schools. I mean, I had no idea how rigged the world is until we had our first million (in Danish KR, so around $150k). Simply being able of putting down 30% on the loan for our house ourselves means that we have around 10k DKK ($1500) more to ourselves, every month, compared our friends who are similar places in life minus the start capital and thus are paying those $1500 directly into the banks pockets.

[sudden_dystopia]

You don’t see the negative externalities of thousands of start ups growth hacking just so that they can IPO? And thousands of already public companies hacking growth to stay publicly traded?

Or do you just not want to see it?

[EnKopVand]

If you’re asking me if I know that the world isn’t fair then I hate to tell you this, but I feel a lot more guilty about the shady supply line that led to me being capable of writing this reply on my iPhone than of any work or investment I’ve ever personally been involved in.

That being said, I don’t agree with the sentiment that a company needs to “growth hack” to go from startup to successful IPO. It obviously happens, but a lot of companies succeed by selling something that is actually useful. It may not be as glamorous as working for a FAANG company, but you can make a pretty decent career out of helping non-tech companies scale beyond excel sheets.