Should aspiring founders pursue modest, achievable business goals rather than chase venture-backed unicorn ambitions?

Matthew Prince · published Oct 16, 2023

You can be wildly successful as an entrepreneur without going public or having a billion-dollar idea; a repeatable bootstrapped business throwing off a few million in cash flow is in some ways the best possible business

A small team can each take a million dollars out of a business and then repeat the exercise, without the obligations of a public company

Scope: 'in some ways' the best possible business

38:44 20VC: The Two Biggest Mistakes Every Founder Makes, Why Founders Are Not Ambitious Enough Today, Why Having a Narrow Target Customer is Dangerous & The Three Possible Outcomes in Company Building with Matthew Prince, Co-Founder @ Cloudflare

Matthew Prince · published Oct 16, 2023

Reliably extracting a million dollars a year from a low-maintenance SaaS business and repeating it with complementary partners is a very good outcome, not a failure of focus

The business doesn't demand much time, so the team can compound by building a second, third and fourth one

40:19 20VC: The Two Biggest Mistakes Every Founder Makes, Why Founders Are Not Ambitious Enough Today, Why Having a Narrow Target Customer is Dangerous & The Three Possible Outcomes in Company Building with Matthew Prince, Co-Founder @ Cloudflare

Nick Huber · published Aug 21, 2023

Internet entrepreneurship culture will burn out a lot of brilliant people who chase massive venture-backed unicorns when they would have succeeded had they started small with modest goals

They get caught up in the hoopla of online entrepreneurship culture, fail at the oversized goal, and end up taking jobs instead of building wealth and being their own boss

52:15 Chasing unicorn ambitions burns out founders who could have succeeded small

Harry Stebbings · published Oct 16, 2023 · hedged

Founders are better off scaling one business much bigger because companies compound over time and get easier as they grow

Things compound over time and generally get easier

40:33 Scale one business bigger rather than repeat smaller ones since compounding favors scale

David Heinemeier Hansson · published Apr 14, 2020

The narrative glorifying money and the unicorn chase is one of the most damaging mimetic viruses in tech, and founders would be better off asking whether they like their work and colleagues than what the exit or ultimate size will be

Liberating founders from outcome-obsession lets them focus on doing something good in a basic sense rather than 'changing the world'

43:59 Unicorn chasing narrative is a damaging myth founders should ask if they like the work instead

Adam Fisher · published Jan 22, 2024

Chasing scale through more ambition, more money raised and a higher valuation is not how you actually build a bigger company

Some second-time entrepreneurs are blinded by previous success, believe they can do anything, and equate building bigger with raising more at higher prices

9:38 Chasing money and valuation does not build a bigger company

Paul Graham · published Sep 2012

YC does not push founders toward outsized outcomes; because only the biggest exits matter financially and those are effectively guaranteed by share markets, other outcomes including early sales, lifestyle businesses, or shutting down are acceptable.

It would be bogus to press founders to do something YC's own founders didn't do with Viaweb; and since remaining outcomes don't significantly affect returns, they don't need to be optimized.

source Accelerators should not push founders toward unicorn outcomes since only the biggest exits move fund returns anyway