{"id":32985,"date":"2016-12-01T05:00:38","date_gmt":"2016-12-01T12:00:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tested-neuron.flywheelsites.com\/?p=32985"},"modified":"2016-12-01T09:41:38","modified_gmt":"2016-12-01T16:41:38","slug":"your-best-startup-strategy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/unreasonablegroup.com\/articles\/your-best-startup-strategy\/","title":{"rendered":"Figuring This Out Might Not Sound Sexy, But It&#8217;s Your Best Strategy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>When I built my first company<\/strong> in the late 90s, this was the prevalent mantra: Get as many eyeballs (the 90s lingo for users) as quickly as possible. We didn\u2019t worry about making money all that much or even figuring out a business model. Back then, the Internet was perceived as a land grab.<\/p>\n<p>Alas, the land was often worth nothing. I find it interesting to see that history seems to repeat itself&#8230;<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"right\"><p>Figuring out how to make money and focusing on how to get to positive cash flow is the best strategy by far.<span id=\"tweetquote\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?url=http:\/\/bit.ly\/2gwKc89&amp;via=unreasonable&amp;hashtags=startups&amp;text=&quot;Focusing on getting to positive cash flow is the best strategy by far&quot; @pfinette\"><i class=\"fa fa-twitter\"><\/i> Tweet This Quote<\/a><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Fueled by a (very) few prominent businesses that are destined to scale at an exponential rate (or as the new word du jour has it: <a href=\"https:\/\/hbr.org\/2016\/04\/blitzscaling\" target=\"_blank\">blitzscale<\/a>), entrepreneurs around the globe seem to believe that it is a valid strategy to focus on building a product without a business model or path to profitability.<\/p>\n<p>Sadly, the outcome of this strategy is nearly always a failed startup and burned out founders.<\/p>\n<p>It might sound distinctly old school, but figuring out how to make money and focusing on how to get to positive cash flow is \u2013 for the vast majority of companies \u2013 the best strategy by far. Praying for a VC who will fund your company until you are \u201ctoo big to fail\u201d is not.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"center\"><p>Praying for a VC who will fund your company until you are &#8216;too big to fail&#8217; is not a good strategy.<span id=\"tweetquote\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?url=http:\/\/bit.ly\/2gwKc89&amp;via=unreasonable&amp;text=&quot;Praying for a VC to fund your company until you're too big to fail\u2013not a good strategy&quot; @pfinette\"><i class=\"fa fa-twitter\"><\/i> Tweet This Quote<\/a><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>With that, why not spend some cycles on refining your business model, pricing, customer acquisition strategy, and cashflow planning?<\/p>\n<p>I know, it doesn&#8217;t sound sexy. But building a growing company that is kicking it for years to come is surely sexy as hell.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><em>This originally published on Pascal&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/theheretic.org\/make-money.html\" target=\"_blank\">blog<\/a>. <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Entrepreneurs globally seem to believe it&#8217;s a valid strategy to focus on building a product without a business model or path to profitability. Money counts. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":32988,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[476,2079,1528,1516],"tags":[3445,1870,3446,17,690,3447,312,2663],"class_list":["post-32985","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-article","category-longterm_beats_shortterm","category-scaling","category-starting-up","tag-blitzscale","tag-business-model","tag-cashflow-positive","tag-money","tag-finette","tag-profitability","tag-strategy","tag-the-heretic"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.8 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Figuring Out This Might Not Sound Sexy, But It&#039;s Your Best Strategy<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Entrepreneurs globally seem to believe it&#039;s a valid strategy to focus on building a product without a business model or path to profitability. 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