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Comment by jordan_clark | Hacker News Reader

I think the title of the blog post should have been "Taking VC money too early is a bad thing". Because truly, at that point your focus has to switch from 'product' to 'profitability'. Overall though, I agree with the sentiments.

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VCs don't necessarily care about profitability either. They're looking for a liquidity event - either M&A or IPO. Profitability is only useful insofar as it helps achieve the desired liquidity event at maximum valuation. More to the point, large investors cause a short-term growth focus, because they're looking for 5-20x returns over the course of a few years. But as others have said, do you want to be rich, or do you want to be king? If you want to make a great product and are willing to take your time to do it, don't take investor money any more than you must, so you aren't beholden to their interests - because "make a great product" isn't their interest.

Very well put. I bootstrapped and provided all of the funding for my company. It was worth the slightly slower growth because it can follow my long term vision and not the short term vision of a VC who is looking for a quick return on their investment.

I think it can be the reverse in a lot of ways. VCs generally aren't as concerned with profitability, only traction and revenue. When you're bootstrapped, profitability is a major concern, since you don't have the comfortable cushion of a runway, and have to "fund" your company using your revenues.

VCs will ensure that you focus on revenue (or at least traction) at the expense of product, though, so the point largely stands.

The title is fine even if a little bit click-baity. However this digression about VC money blurred the core message imho. That's why Nick inspired me to write http://hr4startups.quora.com/When-growth-is-a-really-bad-thi... where I attempt to emphasize the most important stuff.

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