[electric_muse]

Exactly this.

Communicate:

-validation from VCs who should know whether this company has a viable product

-runway to be able survive and build/improve

To:

- prospective employees

- prospective customers

As someone who recently did this kind of funding announcement, it can really help the business to chest beat. It doesn’t have to mean the priorities of the company are wrong.

[PaulHoule]

Also from the viewpoint of management, management can put a tremendous amount of effort into getting funding and it really is on front of their mind.

There's a common case where people hear "company X raised $250 million" and people think "I could do that with $2.5 million, what are they going to do, spend the rest on hookers and cocaine?"

If you've got discipline it isn't bad to have more money than you need because you can keep it in the bank account and either give it back or have it left over when the company gets acquired.

I worked at one place where the investors didn't trust management to be disciplined so they controlled the pursestrings tightly and gave out funding in measured drops -- if anything that caused the discipline problems to be worse since it kept them from focusing on long-term problems.

[cj]

In last year's VC market (and some of this year), don't interpret funding as VC validation.

VC's have been throwing money almost indiscriminately, compared to years past.

The best companies to work for during an economic downturn are ones that don't worry about VC or runway... because they're profitable (with real paying customers).