I find it very hard not to get angry at these posts. I'm thinking also of Fred Wilson's burn-baby-burn piece from a week or two ago.
I am the cofounder of a bootstrapped startup company with 7-figure annual revenue, a better than 100% growth rate for the last several years, a great team, a fantastic market, and a genuinely useful product.
One of the biggest problems facing my company right now is dealing with all of the venture-funded idiots coming after my customers, market and employees without so much as a hint of a viable business model. They outspend us on marketing 1000-to-1 and they offer to serve our clients essentially for free, apparently just to be able to win a logo for the "traction" slide in their deck in the hope that they will have enough proof points to get them their next hit of venture money.
I know that nearly all of them are going to vaporize eventually, but in the meantime they completely poison the well for all of us who are trying to do what Andressen, Wilson and the rest pretend they want startups to be doing - creating sustainable businesses in sustainable markets.
Posting this as an anonymous coward because who knows - I may need to raise venture money myself, though I'm pretty sure we wouldn't qualify with "5x being the new 2x" I don't think anyone is interested in mere 100% growth, even if it comes with the advantages of sustainability built on the back of a real business.
I am the cofounder of a bootstrapped startup company with 7-figure annual revenue, a better than 100% growth rate for the last several years, a great team, a fantastic market, and a genuinely useful product.
One of the biggest problems facing my company right now is dealing with all of the venture-funded idiots coming after my customers, market and employees without so much as a hint of a viable business model. They outspend us on marketing 1000-to-1 and they offer to serve our clients essentially for free, apparently just to be able to win a logo for the "traction" slide in their deck in the hope that they will have enough proof points to get them their next hit of venture money.
I know that nearly all of them are going to vaporize eventually, but in the meantime they completely poison the well for all of us who are trying to do what Andressen, Wilson and the rest pretend they want startups to be doing - creating sustainable businesses in sustainable markets.
Posting this as an anonymous coward because who knows - I may need to raise venture money myself, though I'm pretty sure we wouldn't qualify with "5x being the new 2x" I don't think anyone is interested in mere 100% growth, even if it comes with the advantages of sustainability built on the back of a real business.