[halJordan]

This is the zeitgeist, i get it- corpos bad. But it is such a simplified cliché to buy into so wholly. Public companies are capable of long term planning. Quarterly reviews do enforce efficiency. What you've seen play out again and again is good corporate governance from public companies, you just don't notice it and more's the pity.

[user3939382]

You put words in my mouth (corpos bad) and then said it’s oversimplified. It is over simplified, but you over simplified it, not me.

[halJordan]

I didn't put any words in anyone's mouth. I said you were manifesting a zeitgeist. But honestly you're manifesting another intellectually dominant school of thought. Whereby if anyone does anything less than word for word block quote it's: "i didnt say that. You're wrong." I can absolutely characterize your speech and identify it's meaning and regurgitate it all without resorting to quotes. In fact quotes are a pretty weak form of displaying understanding.

[darkwater]

When you start a comment with "the problem is" and then also add "customers are hurt", well, I would say it's not unreasonable to infer you are expressing a negative opinion on public traded companies.

[JohnFen]

What I've seen play out time and time again is that a company with a good product goes public or gets purchased, and then their good product gets worse. Often much, much worse.

As a customer, I don't care why this is, but it is. That's why this is bad news every time it happens -- it's not that corporations are bad, it's that the products very often (but certainly not always) become undesirable.

[ninkendo]

To be fair, I think a lot of the time a company's initial product is developed/sold in a way that is unsustainable for profitability, in order to attract users/customers/etc. Think "growth hacking", etc. By the time such a company is bought, it's already at the point where they need to start focusing on long-term profitability anyway, which means cutting costs and actually finding a plan to make money. This always needs to happen eventually, and typically being bought (or IPO'ing, etc) is an impetus for this change.

[JohnFen]

I'm sure that's the case a lot of the time. But, as I said, as a customer I don't care why this effect happens. Regardless of the reason, events such as going public, etc., still mark an inflection point where the odds are decent that the product will become much less desirable.

But, as long as we're talking about possible causes, that startups do this sort of thing (catchy name like "growth hacking" or not) is a kind of deception that I object to anyway.

Releasing a product is a kind of promise, in a way. If a product is being released in an unsustainable way (growth hacking), the company should be calling that out from day 1.