The only two startup-y services I can think of off the top of my head that either never got on the venture capital merry-go-round/death spiral/aqui-hire scheme or finally saw the light and got off of it are:
- Pinboard, which charged a one-time up-front fee when I got my account, and now charges an annual fee for new users. It also outlived Delicious long enough to buy it out to keep it alive for users after Yahoo dumped it.
- Gumroad, whose founder recently had a come-to-Jesus moment and realized that he was providing an important service for a bunch of people and that was enough, even if it never hit total market saturation and became another billion-dollar company, and has gradually started buying out his
vultureventure capitalists’ stakes.
Everybody else is still chasing the dragon. I really hope Patreon either figures this out themselves or gets knocked off by someone else who isn’t obsessed with taking untold millions to run a business in one of the the most expensive places in the US while being hounded by the loaners for unbounded quarter-over-quarter growth.
