It's 100% the responsibility of the founders and leadership.
I think enshittification is more a consequence of either 1) current metrics not matching costs 2) loss of long-term vision of further innovation (often once it's no longer founder led) 3) no competition.
It's either an attempt to make up for the bleeding short-term (1), unclear path of expansion (2) or an excessive ability to maximize costs due to no alternatives on the market (3).
In many ways, I'd argue VCs decrease the risk of enshittification or delay it. They're comfortable funding the delta between current metrics vs. costs (1) – up to a point, of course. They also love to fund competition in proven markets (3).
> Incumbents [...] would simply pocket the bounties for issues that never got picked up. Is this a risk for yours too?
This is a combination of the problem not having been solved at scale and of such actors needing cash (1). At Polar now, we have runway for years even without $1 in revenue – thanks to VCs.
Of course, I understand what you mean and ultimately the problem in our industry arises when "the party stops". At some point current metrics & costs need to balance. However, I'd argue this is the responsibility of the founders. VCs will always be the voice of "invest in growth" because it's fundamentally what their capital is for. Founders need to know how to leverage it, track current metrics and obsess about how things are progressing to match up eventually and spend + invest accordingly. Combined with having a long-term mission & vision spanning beyond quarterly goals. Enshittification is duck tape for lacking these things and ultimately fuel for competition.
So to answer your question, I believe I'm to be held accountable and not VCs in case we enshittify the product. Having worked at Shopify, I'm inspired by their 100-year mission and being founder+product led and obsessed about merchants – knowing money comes as a reward and is not the pursuit. Having also started a company before, I've learned to "not get drunk" by the party.
We're building towards something new in the pursuit of creating an independent pathway towards careers and small businesses within OSS for those who want to pursue it. It will take time and it will cost a lot of money to make this bet. It would have been impossible without VCs and I've chosen really great ones who align with this mission. I'm beyond thankful for them making this possible because that's what it boils down to.
Finally, we're open source so you can hold us accountable :-)
https://github.com/polarsource/polar