Should founders treat high valuation as a primary goal, or as an incidental byproduct of building good products?

Clem Delangue · published May 12, 2023

Founders should build the company they believe needs to exist even if that means not building the biggest company; becoming the biggest company should be a side effect of being impactful, not the goal

His own goal for Hugging Face is to be the most impactful organization in AI, with scale as a byproduct of that impact rather than the objective

Scope: stated as advice he gives founders

44:56 20VC: Why The Future of AI Is Open Not Closed, Why We Are Years Away From AI Being Autonomous, Why AI Founders Do Not Need to Move to the Valley & Why Founders Should Not Meet Investors in Between Rounds with Clem Delangue @ Hugging Face

Howie Liu · published Aug 25, 2023

Valuation is an output metric that founders shouldn't chase; focusing on durable, efficient growth will inevitably justify any valuation

Valuation is a function of execution and revenue multiples compress and expand outside your control, whereas durable compounding growth is in your control

Scope: 'easier said than done'

34:29 20Product: Enterprises are not Adopting AI Yet, When Will AI Break Into Enterprise, What are the Blockers, What Do Enterprises Need from AI & Why Services Companies Will Win in the Next 10 Years of AI Implementation with Howie Liu, Founder & CEO @ Airtabl

Cristóbal Valenzuela · published Aug 28, 2023

Optimizing for or trying to grow into a valuation is optimizing for the wrong thing

Valuation is just the market pricing you on many variables; optimizing for it puts incentives in the wrong place and leads to actions good for the valuation but bad for the company long term, whereas the company could be worth a hundred times more if you build toward the ten-year vision

Scope: treats valuation as a useful signal of how the market values what you're doing; says it's still very early for Runway and the industry

31:57 20VC: Why AI Models are not a Moat, Where Does the Value in AI Accrue; Startups or Incumbents, What the World Has Got Wrong About AI, Why AI Needs a New Story and Who is the Right People to Tell it with Cris Valenzuela, Co-Founder & CEO @ Runway

Fabien Pinckaers · published Feb 12, 2025

Valuation should not drive a founder; revenue matters only as a means to finance the work, and delivering software that transforms customers matters more

He doesn't need or care about money, so a high valuation is only a good side effect rather than a goal

43:30 20VC: The $5BN Company Built from the Belgian Countryside | The Story of Odoo: The Company with No Plans to Sell, IPO & Their Billionaire Founder Who Does Not Care About Money with Fabien Pinckaers, Founder & CEO @ Odoo

Paul Graham · published Sep 2013

Valuation is not important and should not be optimized: getting the money you need comes first, good investors second, valuation at best third.

Fundraising is not the test that matters — revenue is — so fundraising is only a means to getting back to building the company.

Scope: about phase 2 fundraising

source How to Raise Money

Paul Graham · published Sep 2013

Empirical evidence confirms valuation's unimportance: Dropbox and Airbnb, YC's most successful companies, raised post-YC money at premoney valuations of only $4 million and $2.6 million.

Today's prices are so much higher that almost any startup that can raise at all beats those numbers, yet at a test that doesn't matter.

source How to Raise Money