Rand FishkinVerified account

More value is placed on the attention of investors over the attention of customers. Which is weird. Harder to make something worthy of customers' attention, IMHO.

I do think it's weird (and I bet investors do, too) that so much energy is spent attempting to impress investors > customers.

I'm probably *really* naive in this view, but I'd think that attracting and retaining and growing an audience of customers eager to fork over hard earned cash for whatever it is you e got cookin', would be more than enough to attract the attention of investors.

Not naive; it makes initial sense. The rub is how institutional capital operates -- very different from personal investing. The model of 200 investments, 5 wins, 15 nice-to-haves, 20 more that didn't really move the needle, and 160 that died forces the outlier bias.

Yep. Case in point: I sold a company in 2012 for $34MM as 100% owner, no funding, zero debt. 12yrs of work. Barely a media mention, yet the deal was bigger than TechCrunch sale, Flickr etc. The valley bestows the success moniker and hype on those who raise.

Is it too simplistic to say, why are we cheering for people who got a loan. Getting a loan is nothing to cheer about, turning that loan into a business that makes a consistent profit that should be what we congratulate people on.

We congratulate the start, not the finish. Raise money - congrats Make money - crickets Go into debt for new house - congrats Pay off house - crickets Get married - let's have a huge wedding for 10-30k & go in debt - congrats Stay married - crickets

Very true. Except for the finish line of an Ironman. That is one place where the finish is very much celebrated & congratulated. And for good reason.

I feel like sports does a broadly good job of this -- celebrating participation and wins > buying running shoes. Lots of other things I wish sports world did well, but...

Strangely I feel some of the issue come from startup culture mimicking sports, and competing on valuation. There are strong incentives to grow your paper value fast, beyond the reasonable aspects of GTM strategies.

You can't fake it in sports though; get onto the field and you're immediately found out. Startups have definitely bullshitted their way all the way to an exit.

Preach the fundamentals and the score takes care of itself. The industry has gotten too complex and people rely too much on the signifiers over the signified. A return to focus on revenue and growth is necessary.

It’s almost as if the media is trained and incentivized to write about whatever rich white dudes find exciting enough to throw their money away at...