Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think the problem is with capital writ large, but rather the perverse influence of capital incentives as applied to a personal security product. The value one gains from a personal security product (data portability, availability, accessibility) is often at odds with the interests of capital, which lean towards moat construction and rent-seeking. Over time, in a for-profit company, capital will always "win".…
> For an adjacent example, LastPass never took a dime of VC money (afaict), but their structure as a for-profit company pushed them to lock down their product and charge rents, where they had not previously. If they had taken VC money or went public instead, it may have delayed the inevitable, but it only would have been a delay, not a solution. I do not understand. It's a business. Why would anyone expect important…
I think the "common person" does not see these as growth hacks. The internet is full of things that "appear" free, and have "appeared" free forever.
You have x-ray vision for how these businesses work internally, and you describe the playbook very accurately, but most people do not have this kind of context.
Which makes it hard for those people to distinguish "good people doing good work for the good of all" from the playbook you describe. It's especially hard when the company describes itself as the former externally.
> Capital incentives unchecked by a counter balance of leadership actually believing in the mission of the company can lead to bad outcomes.
This is true. As a customer, depending on the good-will of leadership to counterbalance the influence of capital is depending on humans, and even really good ones are fallible and temporal.
A for-profit company blessed with good leadership today does not guarantee a for-profit company with good leadership tomorrow, a year from now, and so-on. Eventually, within the constructs of a for-profit company, capital always wins.
> In my opinion great products need a strong balance of capital and ideals.
Yep yep, value creation and openness are not mutually exclusive, and one does not have a monopoly on the other.
However, I'd argue that value capture and openness are mutually destructive: only one wins in the end, and the total victory of either marks the death of a business (i.e. something that generates profits for shareholders).
From a consumer's point of view, once an organization gets in the mindset of optimizing for value capture over value creation and openness, it's time to consider moving on.
The paradigm-shift of software is that the victory of openness no longer means the destruction of customer value, because OSI-licensed software can outlive the business.