I think you're falsely equating "asking for money" with remaining independent in the long-term, I think Hackpad in this case was successful: I know of several c

I think you're falsely equating "asking for money" with remaining independent in the long-term, I think Hackpad in this case was successful: I know of several companies that used their paid "enterprise" offering for years. At Airbnb we used Hackpad extensively as our wiki in the engineering team. In many ways Dropbox Paper is like Hackpad 2.0, but it has different branding. Hackpad continued to run long after Dropbox bought them - for 3 years! This is less of an "our incredible journey" then you think.