Oh dear, this isnt good news at all. Now they're going to be under pressure to produce excessive returns to fatten the company up for an IPO or sale. Having seen what happened to Lastpass when it was passed around from pillar to post this saddens me deeply. Lets see what anti consumer measures they start introducing to force us to pay more. Limitations on the free tier look likely and price rises as well.
It's weird seeing ppl downplay this exact scenario. They raised $100M, can they hit sales in a recession? Rates are rising for VCs, they need to generate a winner quickly more than ever. Just in time before the expected 75bps rate increase
For sure. Taking venture capital increases the odds of a large success, but also increases the odds of total failure. VCs are perfectly willing to blow up a modestly successful business if it means a chance at a giant success.
And from my perspective as a BitWarden customer, both of those outcomes could be worse for me. Obviously for failure, but many companies in their rush for new pots of money can do things that aren't great for existing customers. And then if those rushes don't work out, things like layoffs, reorgs, and other chaos can diminish customer focus, leading to long-term product decline.
Here we go again: Some company (in this case, Bitwarden) "betrayed" its customers by doing what every other firm does. And Hn goes brrr over it.
I wonder, aren't the majority of HNers working at a for-profit company funded by VCs?
> I wonder, aren't the majority of HNers working at a for-profit company funded by VCs?
they're probably over-represented given that this is an incubator-adjacent forum but startups are vastly outnumbered by both mature businesses as well as bog-standard privately owned businesses so probably not.
Most firms don't get a hundred million dollars up front, they grow products and revenue just like everyone else, with significantly fewer distortions to users or business models.
I guess I might be now that the directors of our little company have sold it, but I assure you I am substantially more mad about that sale than I am about the Bitwarden one.
