I see the same phenomenon and think it's the opposite.

Raising millions is not a reward. I understand why you think that way since I used to think that way too. But I learned the hard way that raising money is nothing more than the price you have to pay to get to somewhere you want.

So what IS reward? Obviously, if your business does well and "growing" crazy, that's your reward. That way you didn't even have to give up your control over the company and still managed to outsmart others who wasted tons of money and didn't even get anything done.

That's the reward you get for working hard honestly. I also used to think that honest people never get rewarded, and that was a couple of years ago when I was looking at all the pointless apps getting funded. Now if you look back, none of them are alive. Even the ones that were growing like crazy all die off, because most of the ones that grew like crazy were designed to grow like crazy in a synthetic manner instead of organically growing based on the value they provide to users.

So the lesson is, just look at your customers. If you see that more and more people are using and buying your product, that means you are doing something right. You don't need validation from investors and the press.

p.s. You can buy press anyway. Once you have enough money and traction just hire a PR agency and pitch a story for a guaranteed spot on relevant publications. This is much better than these VC funded startups wasting money doing the PR piece when they have no substance.

> Raising millions is not a reward.

They get paid for the X years it takes their startup to crash, probably quite well.

Afterwards, they are considered an "Experienced entrepreneur" and thus more likely to get their foot in the door to more negotiations, given press time etc.

What part of this is failing?

In most cases the companies that fail after X years have been failing for at least X-1 years. This means these guys were under total stress for X-1 years.

One has no idea what that feels like if they haven't gone through the process.

Another thing is, you're pretty much locked into that company for X years. Even if you realize on year 1 that it's not what you started out to build, you still need to go with it, otherwise you're seen as an irresponsible prick, and people won't see you as "experienced entrepreneur". Most of the times what happens is you either trick yourself into thinking that it will work, or compromise your initial vision into building something mediocre that generates money (For example you may start out thinking you will build the next generation social network that will change everything, and end up with a behavioral targeting ad network)

Imagine wasting X-1 years of your life working on something you no longer "truly" believe in. That part is failing.

If you still don't agree, try raising money and starting a company, and work on it for X years. You will understand.

> In most cases the companies that fail after X years have been failing for at least X-1 years. This means these guys were under total stress for X-1 years.

> One has no idea what that feels like if they haven't gone through the process.

> Imagine wasting X-1 years of your life working on something you no longer "truly" believe in. That part is failing.

> If you still don't agree, try raising money and starting a company, and work on it for X years. You will understand.

please, enlighten us with the hardships of being paid lots of funny money, and spending even more funny money, on something you know is going to fail for X-1 years, but you keep doing it anyways because ???

Have you ever worked hard on something for many years and faced the prospect of it still failing? It's painful to think about your baby dying. Startup founders generally don't do it for the (usually below market) salary.

> Have you ever worked hard on something for many years and faced the prospect of it still failing?

Not with someone else paying for it, and knowing I'll still be well-regarded even if it fails.

That definitely reduces the risk vs. funding it yourself, sure, but founders are still investing a large chunk of their life into it, and that's not something people usually breezily write off. Having other people funding it can actually increase the amount of guilt and stress you feel about failing - you let down the people that believed in you. For most people, that hurts.

It's easy to sit on the sidelines and make snide remarks about founders who you think are wasting others' money paying themselves cushy salaries (most pay themselves far below what they'd make at Google), but I don't think you're really in any position to until you've put yourself out there in some similar fashion.

Enlightment is not that easy man, i already mentioned how to get "englightened" if you're so willing to learn: Go ahead and do it yourself and find out.

I have better things to do than trying to enlighten some random guy online.

Agree with you! Thanks for elaborating!

The big losers in a VC funded snake oil are the founders. In the end of the day they waste years of their lives making starvation wages for nothing.

Founders can pull money out in later rounds and pocket a lot of cash. E.g. The Secret founders.

> The problem is honesty isn't rewarded anymore. Someone working hard will be beaten by someone who tells all the fancy stuff...

Wait. Are you talking about politics now? :)

Social media presence isn't a useful indicator of growth rate for the majority of companies. In many cases it's a waste of marketing budget.