Role Models: Tala’s Shivani Siroya and Wistia’s Chris Savage & Brendan Schwartz
by Miki Saxon
A Friday series exploring Startups and the people who make them go. Read all If the Shoe Fits posts here.
Short post, longer articles, but worth the read.
Not all founders are focused on valuation.
Some think it through, realize their mission is the most important thing and find like-minded investors.
What has made us really successful is this idea that we’re not building a company. What we’re doing is solving a problem. In that sense, we’re not emotional about our solution but, rather, constantly listening to our customers and the market and being able to then adjust alongside that. –Shivani Siroya, founder of Tala.
Others get seduced by the idea of ego-boosting valuations, money to drive growth and a buy-out that lets them retire — or do it again.
Most founders dream of building a product that eventually becomes a household name and sells for a billion dollars, but chasing that goal comes with some downsides. The grow-at-all-costs model inevitably forces you to sacrifice something you care about in service of short-term revenue growth, whether that’s your culture, your employee experience, your products, or your creative approach.
That said, when they find the fun gone some go to great lengths to extricate themselves and their company from the investor attitude of “growth first/last/always!” as opposed to the radical idea of pleasing customers, employees and thinking for the long-term.
The Wistia founders felt so strongly that they preferred debt to selling — a large amount of debt.
We turned down the offer to sell Wistia and instead took on $17.3M in debt. This allowed us to buy out our investors, gain full control of Wistia, and take the path less traveled in the tech industry.
Read Wistia’s story, as told by it’s founders, on it’s site.
There’s a lot of hard-won wisdom, along with pragmatic explanations of what look like touch-feely decisions.
What is often forgotten in startup land is the high value associated with being happy to get up and go to work.
