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My fucking investment fund lost precisely zero dollars and zero cents on the war, and I saved all the backers' money right before sanctions hit. Meanwhile, you can't even manage your credit card debt and spending habits. I don't have a fucking credit card and I never did, and I probably never will. When you sign your first loan paper, you're signing your certificate of financial incompetence. You have no risk management. If some bipolar trans twink is factually better at risk management than you, you have a problem. Go read more Gary Vaynerchuk or something. Go buy a rolex. That'll fix it.
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Leatherman multitools. Some guy set them his old pliers that are no longer manufactured, it had a broken cutter. Leatherman repaired it, polished and cleaned it, and sent it back at no cost. He's now a customer for life. They stand behind their product. Do they have a large market cap? no, not even close. But if I'll be in the market for a multitool, Leatherman's competitor won't stand a chance. Their marketing doesn't matter. I won't listen to them at all.
Also, look at mullvad vpn. Once people discover it, they're customers for life. No hyped vpn service promoted by youtubers can rival that.
This is the kind of product I want to build. -
Loving the energy here, even if a bit misdirected.
It is not simply VC firms and market caps make-believe money fucking things up.
It is not even money metrics instead of customer satisfaction metrics.
The problem is way worse, and much simpler.
It's fear.
Fear that someone bigger will just come and fuck you up just because.
If the USA government says your glorified Wikipedia is a terrorist threat, they will fuck you up.
If China decides your cartoon bear is the root of all dissent, they will fuck you up.
If the richest failed comedian don't like your content moderation policies, he will ruin your fancy email chains company.
But no one - no one - can mess with your creativity-free fruit brand.
Why? Because kneecapping your larger-than-Spain's market cap may fold their whole fiat currency house of cards.
Heh, I expect Google to break up the EU before being broken up by them.
So the "infinite growth" crowd is actually just selling magic amulets to scared rich kids like themselves. -
@JsonBoa I want nothing to do with it.
I don't care about market cap. Stick your hype-driven business practices up your ass. Infinite growth doesn't exist. I won't read your fucking books and attend your fucking bootcamps and MBAs. You don't have a business model. Selling data is not a business model. Fuck your quick-flip venture capital schemes, and especially fuck your “ethics”.
I will be the first alt-tech CEO. I only care about revenue. The real money, not capitalization bubble vaporware. You don't need a huge fleet of engineers if you're smart about your technology, know how to do architecture, and you're not a feature creep. You don't need venture capital if you don't need a huge fleet of engineers. You don't need to sell data if you don't need venture capital. See? See the pattern here?
My experience allows me to build products on entirely my own. I am fully aware of the limitations of being alone, and they only inspire lean thinking and great architectural decisions. If you know throwing capacity at a problem is not an option, you start thinking differently. And if you don't need to hire anyone, it is very easy to turn a profit and make it sustainable.
If you don't follow the path of tech vaporware, you won't have the problems of tech vaporware, namely distrust of your user base, shitty updates that break everything, and of course “oops, they raised capital, time to leave before things go south”.
A friend of mine went the path I'm talking about, developed a product over the course of four years all alone, reached $10k MRR and sold for $0.8M. But I won't sell. I only care about revenue. If I get to $10k MRR, I will most likely stop doing new features and focus on fixing all the bugs there are and improving performance. This and security patches. Maybe an occasional facelift. That's it. Some products are valued because they don't change, like Sublime Text. The utility tool you can rely on. This is my scheme, this is what I want to do in life. A best-kept secret.
Imagine 100 million users that hate my product but use it because there are no alternatives, 100 people in data enrichment department alone, a billion dollars of evaluation (without being profitable), 10 million twitter followers, and ten VC firms telling me what to do and what data to sell.
Fuck that. I'd rather have one thousand loyal customers and $10k MRR. I'm different, some call it a mental illness, but the bottom line is, my goals are beyond their understanding. They call me crazy. I won't say it was never about the money, of course it was, but inflating your evaluation is not “money”. But the only thing they have is their terrible hustle culture lives and some VC street wisdom, meanwhile I HAVE products, it is on record on my PH. I have POTDs, I have a fucking Golden Kitty nomination on health and fitness for a product I made in one day. Fuck you.
rant