This seems like too general of advice. If you are profitable without raising, that in itself is a gift. Why take on debt if you don't need to? This might apply to fast-growth ventures that need to outpace competition to have a chance at existing, but not every company is structured like this or is in a market that requires this.
> A regulatory rug pull can and will outstrip any early traction or compliance gold stars that you think might save you.
Interestingly, this reminds me of all the apps built off Facebook's APIs in the early days. They would regularly remove one feature that was catastrophic. It's difficult to base your existence on some whale's whims, but in some ways often inevtiable too.
> A critical third-party informed us that they’d changed their mind on a key technical decision.
I'm so curious who. I got sick of dealing with Plaid's ceaseless API changes and ended up writing my own scraper for Wells Fargo transactions. I doubt they were using Plaid though XD.
Overall a really interesting writeup and I'm thankful to the author for sharing.