I sometimes get to talk to a founder CEO of a very successful fintech unicorn, recently public. They are doing pretty well so far (little affected by tech stock

I sometimes get to talk to a founder CEO of a very successful fintech unicorn, recently public. They are doing pretty well so far (little affected by tech stock rout). He's pretty obsessive about what "investors" (i'm assuming public share holders by now) think and what they tell him. I was surprised because I wouldn't think that a public, seemingly independent money-maker would be paying so much attention to what a bunch of people effectively outside of the business say. So while there is no need for a company with cash flow to raise money VC-style, I think they pay a lot of attention to how "investors have changed how they’re evaluating companies" for reasons like: having to struggle with the board and the largest shareholders (all the way up to the board firing the CEO if need be), potential activist investors picking up fights with something they dislike, or even a random outside analyst (or several) publishing a crappy outlook. Some of those seem tangential to the business, because CEO is closer to the operations and often knows better, yet it seems to be a factor.