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> No start-up is operating with 6 years of cash to burn, and certainly no early-stage companies where investors are putting pressure on you to spend to grow. Ni

> No start-up is operating with 6 years of cash to burn, and certainly no early-stage companies where investors are putting pressure on you to spend to grow. Nice thought, though. Sure, many aren't, but when VCs are throwing dozens of millions of dollars at you and your only operating expense is employees, it's not hard to have a 5-15 year runway where the only bottleneck in growth is hiring. I know three Series A corps with a 10+ year runway that have shown up on HN, and they all pay comically well for startups. The CEOs I know and respect cut cheques for whatever they need to get the job done.

tomnipotent 5y ago
> I know three Series A corps with a 10+ year runway Outliers, by definition, are generally not a good example of a population. Investors are not interested in you sitting on their money, and they will push you to spend faster. There are always outliers, but the average/median time between fundraising rounds for most start-ups is 18-20 months with average/median Series A raise of $10M/$20M. > for whatever they need to get the job done. Spending money is a gamble, you have no idea if what you're spending it on is going to work. Most start-ups - and businesses in general - fail. Even the ones where the CEO spent the money to get the job done. And if somehow a founding team has managed to turn a Series A into 10+ years of runway, it's either because burn was low or they found a profitable business model and stopped being a start-up. My gut tells me most fall into the later category.