You know, I often feel like the success of a business is set at the beginning. There is certain trajectory created by initial starting conditions (founding team, vision, talent, timing), market fit, and external forces and events, and it is very hard to escape that. As CEOs and founders we like to think we have a lot more control than we actually do.

The point of VC is to inject money to achieve hypergrowth. But how much of that growth is achieved because of VC money, and how much because of the "natural trajectory" of the business? Or to ask another way, what portion of the VC money actually affects the trajectory and what portion makes no measurable difference?

This graph shows exactly what I mean. If you only had the "Creator earnings" part of the graph, would you be able to tell where spending was cut?

https://sahillavingia.com/operating.png

I've often felt this way, but this is the first time I see it summarized so succinctly in one image.