(this post is a feed post from my comments on reddit)
r/startups
You’re not wrong, I work at a VC, as a source of funding it’s not appropriate for the majority of businesses out there, the term “startup” is actually very specific in the sense of VC fundable, accelerators and VCs and the advice they give are geared towards this profile.
This has a lot to do with the failure rates and VC approach to investing and delivery returns to their LPs, which means that only massive exits make sense, a 2-5x multiple isn’t even worth getting out of bed for, but for most founders a 5x return on exit is life changing
No, to add to that, most of the advice out there is geared towards companies in growth stage, if you apply it too soon you end up running your business into the ground, the blitz scaling you refer to is a good example of this- if you have poor margins and unit economics and you apply blitzscaling what you end up doing is running out of cash before the fly wheel starts
Most startup advice is not the best advice for building a company. It is the best advice for aligning founder interest with VC interest
byu/majani instartups