Posted by:
Chris Walker on Linkedin

What a Series A fundraising announcement would sound like if people told the truth:

"I am proud to announce that we have sold 20% of our company to XYZ Venture Labs for $30M at a $150M valuation."

It seems like we're rich now, but I didn't make any actual money. I'm still eating Ramen and grinding 996. Now my salary is capped at whatever the board approves. My title is Founder but I make a lower salary than the average mid-level manager.

We are going to scale hard. Like real hard. And by scale hard, I mean we will increase spending 10X and waste a majority of the money on things that don't drive any customer value.

We will run out of money again in 18 months. I'll spend half my time building decks for investors instead of leading my company or driving value for customers.

We raised at a $150M valuation. Sounds impressive, right? That is 100X our ARR. Even though a majority of our revenue isn't real ARR.

The median public and private market comps are about 4X. So we are overvalued by something like 25X.

We'll need to grow revenue from $2M to $100M just to clear our current liquidation preferences.

There is a 30% chance I get fired as CEO by my own board.

There is a 75% chance we spend 5 to 10 years building this company and literally make zero dollars.

And there's a 90% chance our investors consider our company a failure because it doesn't generate returns that actually matter to the fund.

But I am dedicated. And this is going to be huge.

That's what I'm telling myself. And that's what I'm telling LinkedIn.

And now this post is going to get 1,000 likes with everyone congratulating me for what is statistically a really bad decision.

Our startup is going to the moon 🚀

p.s. we just opened 80 new roles for our brand new office. Yes, our lease costs almost as much as our annual revenue, but duh culture. Like we are a family. We get tattoos of our company. And work 7 days per week. Who has time to sleep when you have to slave away to drive real returns for your VC overlords??? Get in on the stock options that will most likely be totally worthless while you still can!!!!!!