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Comment by earnesti | Hacker News Reader

It is great for founders, and not so nice for VC investors, and Karri seems comically oblivious to that fact.

He's not oblivious to this and the answer lies in "Raise on Your Own Terms" section.

Linear raised its A during the 2020-2021 frenzy and its Series B when every VC was telling their portfolio companies to reduce burn and get a 4-5 year runway. They created a profitable business in between.

They get to do every single thing exactly how they want to until they raise again (if they ever do).

Correct. Those raises were made when there was some uncertainty about how the business would grow, and the opportunity and timing seemed right. For example, in 2022, it was difficult to predict how deep the market downturn would be. We saw several customers churn because their companies folded. In the end, the market didn't tank as bad than some expected, and we executed better than anticipated. In hindsight, we might not have needed that funding, but at the time, the outlook wasn’t as clear.

Part of this post is to debunk the myth that can be VC backed startup, be profitable and grow fast at the same time. VCs are quite keen in this approach too.

They address this in the article, and I'd say it's rather the opposite of being oblivious. Rather, they understand that you can get way better deals by choosing the times when investors come crawling to you as opposed to times when you're short on cash and the investors know they have you over a barrel.

It's not required of the founder to sell the company cheaply to investors, even though the investors would of course quite like that.

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