As a co-founder of Slowby/WTMG, much of this aligns with my thinking. Growth is important to us, as the value and usefulness of our service (especially WTMG) scales with the number of participants in our community, and more income provides more stability and opportunities for the organization, too.
However, we have avoided calling ourselves a "start-up", specifically to avoid the associations with hyper-growth-at-all-costs VC culture. It just doesn't fit what we're doing.
We have been inspired by common start-up practices, since they often get amazing feats done with small teams. Just like we have been inspired by indie builders. But we're not taking over these practices without consideration.
Indeed, at the forefront are, as this blog post (almost manifesto!?) concludes; respect for users and our community, human-scale interactions, staying true to ourselves as creators, building a business that can keep these values up for the long run.
That does come with some concessions, but in the end this approach is worth it, and we need more of it.
Wow, this is well-written and thought-provoking!
As a co-founder of Slowby/WTMG, much of this aligns with my thinking. Growth is important to us, as the value and usefulness of our service (especially WTMG) scales with the number of participants in our community, and more income provides more stability and opportunities for the organization, too.
However, we have avoided calling ourselves a "start-up", specifically to avoid the associations with hyper-growth-at-all-costs VC culture. It just doesn't fit what we're doing.
We have been inspired by common start-up practices, since they often get amazing feats done with small teams. Just like we have been inspired by indie builders. But we're not taking over these practices without consideration.
Indeed, at the forefront are, as this blog post (almost manifesto!?) concludes; respect for users and our community, human-scale interactions, staying true to ourselves as creators, building a business that can keep these values up for the long run.
That does come with some concessions, but in the end this approach is worth it, and we need more of it.