[rich_sasha]

It seems like with a number of the high-growth startups, the client isn't really the client.

The real client is the VC who writes cheques and provides validation in increasing valuations. The "regular clients" are a raw material, to be converted into the service provided to VC.

Clearly, in the early days, you desperately need "regular clients" to prove yourself to the "VC clients". But eventually you earned your stripes and you can again care about valuation over revenue and profit, and consequently customer retention.

Add to it the SV dream of inventing a niche and monopolising it, and you care about your customers less still.

[bcgraham]

Isn’t it right and proper for management to serve ownership?

[RHSeeger]

In much the same way that the cashier at McDonalds does what the manager instructs them too, yes. But if the goal of the manager is to get what they want at the expense of the customer, then the restaurant should fail. The same holds true with other businesses; the management serves the ownership, but the ownership should want the business to make the customers happy.

[DoughnutHole]

The issue isn't about what's "right and proper" - it's a risky decision to do business with a company with this business model. Even if it's not "wrong" it's better value for a business to work with other businesses that treat them as a valued customer and not as replaceable fodder to fund an unsustainable valuation.

If Stripe want to sacrifice customer experience to chase a higher valuation that's their prerogative. But their current investors better hope they can cut and run before the core business substantially declines.

[drewbeck]

If the best we can come up with is hierarchies of servitude we will end up with yet another destructive and oppressive system.

which is about where we're at, so

[bfuller]

In a corporate structure, yes I would say so. Whether that is the best organizational method is another debate for another thread.

[papito]

No, the right and proper management is to grow a business and make it sustainable and profitable long-term.

Your description is exactly how Capitalism goes late stage. Use the profits from the committed work and effort of employees to "buy back" stocks, depriving the company of reinvestments and growth. Jack up the share price, therefore increasing the lauded "shareholder value". Keep going until only a husk of the company is left, and peace out with walkaway money.

This is all great, for those with platinum parachutes and those that know what's going on. These are vulture capitalists, but they infiltrate a company first and then eat away at it from the inside.

This is how America lost GE and Boeing. They served "ownership" very well however.

[mrjin]

Yes and no. No customers and no owner to serve soon.