A founder answers

Does Finnlay feel the pressure of a big raise?

Not really. He feels "investor pressure a little bit" but thinks it's "more like internally manufactured" — "all of our investors are quite chill." He doesn't feel the weight of needing "a billion dollar outcome" because the team is aligned: they'd "rather company die trying than be a $50 million company."

The full answer

FM
Finnlay Morcombe · Fluency
EP 23 · Co-founder, Fluency
Show notes ↗

Not really. He feels "investor pressure a little bit" but thinks it's "more like internally manufactured" — "all of our investors are quite chill." He doesn't feel the weight of needing "a billion dollar outcome" because the team is aligned: they'd "rather company die trying than be a $50 million company."

More from this episode

He describes "an invisible investor pressure that I don't think actually really exists." The deeper alignment: "we would rather die trying like company die trying than be like a $50 million company. So we would rather spend all of our money and die at 100 million" than "play the more conservative game, nickel and dime, move to a profitable model earlier." As he puts it: "we've made our peace with that... Cost of playing venture."