The problem is the stupidity of those who believe unprofitable businesses can work in the long term and be sold for lots of money, and the resulting self-fulfilling prophecy, because those businesses indeed can and DO get sold for lots of money.
And the aura of money extends to customers and blinds their judgment. Few people look at long-term sustainability when choosing a service/product. It's usually about how polished it is, how well it works today, how shiny it looks, how "big" the company behind is. Nobody thinks about whether the business will exist in two years. And few people consider that if they are a customer of a VC-funded business, there is literally no outcome that is good for them: either the company goes bankrupt, or it gets acqui-hired, or it gets strategically-acquired, or (best case but very rare) does an IPO. Even in the case of an IPO the customers generally lose, as the product gets bloated with new features they do not want or need (see Dropbox).
When you run a B2B SaaS, you realize all that with painful clarity.
And the aura of money extends to customers and blinds their judgment. Few people look at long-term sustainability when choosing a service/product. It's usually about how polished it is, how well it works today, how shiny it looks, how "big" the company behind is. Nobody thinks about whether the business will exist in two years. And few people consider that if they are a customer of a VC-funded business, there is literally no outcome that is good for them: either the company goes bankrupt, or it gets acqui-hired, or it gets strategically-acquired, or (best case but very rare) does an IPO. Even in the case of an IPO the customers generally lose, as the product gets bloated with new features they do not want or need (see Dropbox).
When you run a B2B SaaS, you realize all that with painful clarity.