The easiest way to not get fired like Sam Altman is to not take investor dollars. But like anything there are massive tradeoffs to either taking investor cash o

The easiest way to not get fired like Sam Altman is to not take investor dollars. But like anything there are massive tradeoffs to either taking investor cash or not taking it (something I am personally grappling with right now). When you take investor capital, you suddenly have the power to do things you would not have had the ability to do for years. You can quit your job day job, hire other engineers, your development speeds up, you may even have a budget to spend on marketing. But the tradeoff here is your entire business shifts overnight, you are no longer the sole authority (ie. the benevolent dictator) and by that you no longer have complete say over the direction of your company. You might want one thing and your investors want another thing, and your job quickly becomes managing the relationship between your investors and the company you founded. Now if you decide to not take investor capital then you stay in absolute control. You call the shots, and only you (and your co-founder(s) if you have them). If you are just a founder with no co-founders then there is zero chance a Sam Altman situation will happen, and even with co-founders that scenario is extremely unlikely because you very likely own an equal stake in the business to your counterparts. The only problem with this scenario is the money, or lack thereof. Until you make enough sales you can forget about hiring help, or quitting your dayjob and forget about a marketing budget because you simply don't have enough money for that. I see these things as opposite sites to a "perfect company" coin. If you have a "perfect company" (as a founder), it means not only is your business generating enough revenue for getting all the cool things you could get with investor dollars, you are also in control like you would be if you didn't take investor dollars. Achieving the "perfect company" is practically impossible so you have to manage which side of the coin you prefer and your business can bear. For a small software company, it's definitely possible to go the bootstrapped route and achieve the "perfect company", though hard. But when you're talking about any capital intensive business (the Tesla's, SpaceX's of the world), then not taking investor dollars means there is a 0% chance your company succeeds unless you're already extremely wealthy.