Yeah sometimes it becomes clear founders forget the purpose of a company is to make money/turn a profit and not just to repeatedly raise money and be famous. I have worked at a company that forgot this. It feels kind of surreal sometimes.
That's one view of what a company should do. Another is that it should become famous enough to attract the attention of a FAANG and get bought out ASAP, making the founders multimillionaires before they turn 30. It's the techbro lottery. Many will play, few will win.
Surreal indeed. It blows my mind to see investors repeatedly try to propel the same business model (like electric scooter sharing) far past the point of reason. The founders can surprisingly turn around, start something else, and get showered with money again.
It feels completely disconnected from reality, a very abstract way of thinking about money and business.
Does that happen sometimes? Surely. But more often than not, founder led companies who have personal attachment to the outcomes deliver far better than some self-interested, career stepping-stone, decision-by-committee corporate blob. See Nvidia, Facebook, Stripe, and Tesla compared to Intel, IBM, GM, and PayPal.
Not arguing that at all. I fully agree. There are a lot of smaller startups that fail to get past the “tribe” level due to founder’s syndrome though, among many other factors. It just reminded me of that right off the bat.
