Two founders discuss why they rejected the Silicon Valley playbook of chasing venture capital and diluting equity. They built their company by keeping ownership and avoiding the pressure to scale at all costs.
What we didn't take with us, I think there is a playbook in Silicon Valley of how to start and run a company. I think it's a really popular playbook because it worked for a lot of companies that we've all heard of, probably plaid included. But I think that we have, over time tried to force fit that model to companies that don't really belong there. That model sort of like to gloss over is, you know, have a good idea, raise a bunch of. Raise all the money you could possibly raise from like the most splashy name brand venture firm. Grow, grow, grow, scale, scale, scale, test, test spaghetti on the wall and see what happens, right? We're a nationally chartered regulated financial institution. Like there is no spaghetti that's going to get thrown on my walls. Everything we have to do has to be like really methodically done and cared for. And so I think we thought long and hard about what our business strategy needs to be for our product or service. And then everything needs to flow around that. Your hiring strategy needs to map to that, your go to market strategy needs to map to that. Your fundraising strategy, your PR strategy needs to map to that. And for us, it looks really, really different from the playbook. So I would just encourage all of you when you're going into an endeavor, I think it's really easy to get pulled into the sort of glamorous world that that is, right? It's really fun to be in the top of TechCrunch, let's all call a spade a spade, right? But like, is that really getting you customers? And if not, spend your time elsewhere and so just be diligent about that time.
I love the fact that you have not raised venture money at all, right? And the fact that the buying the bank meant that you have a revenue stream coming from running a community bank and you've decided to keep all of the equity within your own team and your own staff. And it's a model that we don't talk a lot about here because of that sort of understood Silicon Valley default playbook. But venture money is not the only way. And that's a really important lesson that I think we can learn from William and Annie.
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