I'm broke and my company is not growing. I believe that a large contributing factor to the failure of my company was that we went in to it with an exit in mind instead of a love for our product.
Would we have sold our company for $20 mil? Hell yes. But we went in to Y Combinator excited about an exit and we stunted the growth of our company by shooting for dollars instead of stars.
This is a serious question, so please don't take it as snark or mockery: Wouldn't shooting for dollars increase the growth of your company? Or at least get it ramen profitable so it can't die/fail?
Would we have sold our company for $20 mil? Hell yes. But we went in to Y Combinator excited about an exit and we stunted the growth of our company by shooting for dollars instead of stars.