I suppose this a positive, but I'm skeptical when companies use marketing events and cheeky blog posts to trumpet funding events. Especially when they don't disclose the reason why they needed to source funding the first place. Or they never mention how the capital will help the idea move forward.
The other reason why I am skeptical is that feels like startups these days are more focused on raising money than shipping product. Is the referenced blog post an example?
This is what I hear from this post: "hey, everyone! (waving hands) - we raised a round!"
I'd rather see: "hey, everyone! check out what we rolled out today!"
And If what you rolled out today is successful, innovative, generates net income, and is backed by 500 trillion in venture capital. Fantastic!
Otherwise, why should I be concerned that you got some people to invest in your idea?
Your skepticism is mis-placed. Your concerns are lame in general and especially so for Priceonomics and this particular post. Priceonomics has a history of writing quality blog posts of interest to this audience. This post acknowledges the folly of talking about a funding and proceeds to spend most of the time supplying very useful information about the process. Asking for more detail about intended fund usage is unnecessary. Everyone already knows basically what the funds will be used for.
And you know what? Raising money is worth celebrating. Funding is critical to helping entrepreneurs be successful.
I actually thought the blog post was the opposite of how you read it.
They're basically saying "it doesn't matter that we got funding - our users don't care" (which they don't) but they also know this will raise their profile in terms of finding talented engineers.
The message being "we're hiring and investors believe in us - you should too".
The other reason why I am skeptical is that feels like startups these days are more focused on raising money than shipping product. Is the referenced blog post an example?
This is what I hear from this post: "hey, everyone! (waving hands) - we raised a round!"
I'd rather see: "hey, everyone! check out what we rolled out today!"
And If what you rolled out today is successful, innovative, generates net income, and is backed by 500 trillion in venture capital. Fantastic!
Otherwise, why should I be concerned that you got some people to invest in your idea?