Rant or is it ?

Absolutely sad to see the state of the startups, most of them. I am a founder myself, and this is a post with equal disappointment with myself as much as it is for anyone else who relates. Look at all these companies that have raised shit tons of capital, and now make a fraction of money that has been invested in them. The raised money is spent on outsized, non business sense making acquisition costs, only to keep repeating it till the tap runs dry. Then when all stakeholders get bored, the service quality plummets, the employees are fired and whole sectors are admonished as being bad.

But, my question is, which sector where large sums of money was invested in early days have come out with flying colours. Fucking nothing ! Edtech, proptech, agritech, ecommerce etc. etc. etc. kuch bhi nahi.

Is there any sector where a startup which has raised in the 100s of millions in the first 5 years have actually built a sustainable business at any scale ? Then scaling down, isse acha, scale slowly. The worst part of this whole drama, is pushing the innovation wheel backward and destroying customer sentiment.

Isse acha, raise less money inititally, build slowly, and only scale when the market is ready. Artifical growth makes no sense, unless you have a treasure chest that shall never run out. Even in that case, spend the money on assets and not on random acquisition costs, direct or indirect.

As founders, let's do better, nahi ?