if there’s something that became clear about money as we stepped into ci infra, is that beyond giving you some needed upfront capital, it can’t buy the care for craft, and gtm and product creativity. you either nurture it in the org, from the executives, all the way down to every person in the org, or you are prone to build a shitty product.
that doesn’t mean people won’t buy your product. you can throw money at building realities, for example slapping your name on every surface out there, but this buys attention, not necessarily connection. this is the easy game to play, which aligns well with raising more vc capital.
you can also have an amazing product that doesn’t sell, and this is hard for us developers who tend to believe good craft and usefulness are sufficient for taking the product to market. if you are creative enough, and limits help you with that, you’d be surprised of the things that you can achieve if you have the drive to sell the product to people. note this is not the same drive as building one’s founder reputation thorough a chain of investment rounds.
money is weird, but creativity is even weirder