Eliott have been recently asked during an open session "what would we do differently if we raised more money?".
His reply was: 𝗜 𝗱𝗼𝗻’𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗸 𝘄𝗲’𝗱 𝗱𝗼 𝗮𝗻𝘆𝘁𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗳𝘂𝗻𝗱𝗮𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗮𝗹𝗹𝘆 𝗱𝗶𝗳𝗳𝗲𝗿𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗹𝘆.
I think that raising money is just a way to add-up fuel in the tank, to accelerate and reach milestones faster. I don't think it should change the way we see the company, our core strategy, our core product, our values, ...
Even with 5x cash in the bank, we'd still try to grow as efficiently as possible, and the nature of our objectives wouldn't change.
Of course, for a given timeline, we'd probably target higher thresholds.
With more cash in the bank, we could take more risk and make the team grow quicker to support our business needs.
But in the end, it would be super important to remain focused on the most strategic topics.
Sitting on a pile of cash raised (I wouldn't say the same if it was a pile of cash generated by the company's free cash flows) may cause defocus, which is probably the biggest risk we may face as a hyper-growing company.
We could be tempted to explore various new ideas and dilute our attention into many exploratory topics. I think this can be an easy trap.
That is mainly why I've always tried to banalise it internally when we raised cash in the past: I don't want us to make any fundamental change about the way we work, just because we have more cash available.
Our vision remains the same, our end goal remains the same, our values remain the same. Raising money is just a short-term episode within a long-term journey.