I wasn’t aware of this, but I’m glad I am now. If that’s the case it’s time to look elsewhere or self host, VC funds and acquisitions are rarely good for users so I’ll assume the worst.
It comes from a concern that VC backed investments demand a constant level of revenue growth, causing a company to add features or integrations that do not improve the base product. Organic growth is usually insufficient for stockholders, whose demands become a priority over stakeholders.
If the user base does not increase at some rate determined by the investor, then growth comes in the form of advertising, partnerships, or similar that negatively affect the _product_ existing customers signed up for.
The issue is that there are a large number of products/companies (I think the vast, vast majority) whose addressable market size isn't that big, but when they take VC money they do all types of unnatural things to try to grow instead of focusing on the couple things they were really good at. Couple cases in point:
1. Totally agree with the comments that VC funding absolutely killed LastPass.
2. Twitter is probably another good example. Twitter was a really large business, but they were constantly wringing their hands about what they could do to get as big as Facebook or Instagram. What if the answer was always just "No, you'll never be that big, just don't even try". So instead of improving their core bread-and-butter (and fine, easy to argue they didn't even do that super well), they wasted a ton trying to get users who were never going to use Twitter in the first place.
3. Very closely related to this idea about "When large sums of money become toxic", the private equity consolidation in US health care is another ongoing disaster. PE comes in with the promise of "streamlining operations", but instead they are just vampires, cutting stuff to the bone so that the health care system isn't able to respond to spikes in demand (e.g. Covid): https://www.statnews.com/2022/12/14/moodys-private-equity-he...
My guess is they will follow 1Password and have more strategies to monetize users. I wonder what the difference between the two services will be at the end of the day.
1Password in my experience was the biggest scum of bait and switch I ever faced.
They used to do "lifetime" licenses which I bought into, but wouldn't support it beyond one year of release and stop giving me updates.
Later, they invested heavily into the cloud side of things, and brought in confusing subscription-based pricing which made it expensive and difficult to understand. All they're doing as of now is trying to increase prices and tear into your pockets.
With BW I have never expected the same and I am still hopeful on giving them the benefit of doubt.
mbesto|3 years ago
Where does this sentiment come from? I know very few applications I use that are VC funded or haven't gone through acquisitions...
bsg75|3 years ago
If the user base does not increase at some rate determined by the investor, then growth comes in the form of advertising, partnerships, or similar that negatively affect the _product_ existing customers signed up for.
hn_throwaway_99|3 years ago
1. Totally agree with the comments that VC funding absolutely killed LastPass.
2. Twitter is probably another good example. Twitter was a really large business, but they were constantly wringing their hands about what they could do to get as big as Facebook or Instagram. What if the answer was always just "No, you'll never be that big, just don't even try". So instead of improving their core bread-and-butter (and fine, easy to argue they didn't even do that super well), they wasted a ton trying to get users who were never going to use Twitter in the first place.
3. Very closely related to this idea about "When large sums of money become toxic", the private equity consolidation in US health care is another ongoing disaster. PE comes in with the promise of "streamlining operations", but instead they are just vampires, cutting stuff to the bone so that the health care system isn't able to respond to spikes in demand (e.g. Covid): https://www.statnews.com/2022/12/14/moodys-private-equity-he...
unknown|3 years ago
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Dalewyn|3 years ago
ssgodderidge|3 years ago
princevegeta89|3 years ago
With BW I have never expected the same and I am still hopeful on giving them the benefit of doubt.