37Signals:
This is a good question. We believe there’s a strong culture, especially here in Silicon Valley, of taking investment early, and lots of it. If you don’t do this, you’re considered a “lifestyle” company, which is in most circles, a derogatory term. Starting off it just seemed like getting investment was the “normal” thing to do.
At the same time, we wanted to shape iTeleport in our own vision — a company that was about more than just profits, instead it would be a place where awesome people would work on a whole range of problems — whether for-profit, or non-profit — and also wanted to create a space for personal growth and development for each of us. We didn’t believe that the investment community would have let us get away with this — and we didn’t want to spend our time trying to explain ourselves to someone else. Most importantly though, we just didn’t need any money — we had plenty of it from our products.
This is what I was talking about.