Completely anecdotal and subjective, I know: Personally I try to steer clear of venture-backed startups when I can for the following reasons. The first is out

Completely anecdotal and subjective, I know: Personally I try to steer clear of venture-backed startups when I can for the following reasons. The first is out of fear of the dreaded announcement about the exciting next steps for the team because they got acquired yay (which typically translates to either the product I was relying on being shut down, merged into a shitty bigger product and/or my data being used by Big Co which is possibly what I was trying to avoid by using a small companies product in the first place. Basically, a service provider being acquired has never translated to a positive to me the customer in my personal experience). Especially if the company gets bought by google: now I can look forward to both having my data taken by google (something I’m going to great lengths to minimise!) and an above average chance of the product getting cancelled. The second is the pressure to make the big return on investment (not just sustainable profit), which in consumer products usually means advertisement and in b2b often means aggressive analytics. Finally, if the company wasn’t successful enough fast enough it often gets shut down. Either way, the business pressures usually mean it ends up negative for me, the customer.