We need more calm companies

I think that's a very standard VC line I've encountered in the startup world, but the stats just don't bear it out.

Pick any software business - productivity tools, marketing, data providers, security, UX, medical/healthcare - and the reality is always that 1-5 big companies dominate, while 100s or 1000s of smaller companies, many that fit with the ideas of the "calm company" philosophy, are profitable and even growing (albeit more slowly).

The "winner take all" mentality isn't even true in the sectors where it's supposed to be a hard and fast rule. Social media platforms have a half dozen dominant players, and another 40-50 businesses that are successful by the calm definition. Search engines - Google dominates, but another half dozen and a few hundred vertical search engines (in travel, B2B data, real estate, ecommerce of every kind, etc.) have 10s to 100s of millions in revenue.

Until I see an economy-wide analysis of this "winner takes all" rule, with massive numbers of sectors where no small/calm companies are surviving, will I believe this is true. Seems to me like the "riches in the niches" saying is actually the rule, but it doesn't fit with the unicorn-or-bust returns model of large venture funds.

due to shareholder primacy, one can no longer seek investors. seek customers instead. this is fine.

17 years ago I worked for a startup company. Despite being VC funded and not yet profitable, we remained calm. Our investors were institutional and government organizations who were more concerned with trying to build a successful company than trying to get a quick or huge payout. It took a few years, but we became profitable, and we worked steadily towards growing, but never in a rush.

Several years ago we were acquired by Siemens. They continued to invest in our group and expand it, even through the pandemic, always with an eye on steady, sustainable growth. Of course there are always targets to hit and people feeling pressured to hit them, but nobody is afraid of losing their job or being asked to work overtime. There always has been and continues to be a culture of work life balance; happy and healthy employees are productive and stick around.

I know lots of other people in my industry and in my area who have similarly calm jobs, whether smaller startups or larger, mature companies. Around here, it's the norm, not the exception.

The thing is, you don't hear about those companies in the news. It's the ones who are frantically hiring and firing that get people's attention. Everyone else just quietly goes about their business.

There is a whole fund full: https://calmfund.com

And other fund with this same model: https://tinyseed.com

> They just don’t pay SV wages.

As a candidate, how do you separate this kind of company from one where the owners are cheap and want to pay you as less as possible?

There are a lot of companies that advertise terrific WLB, pictures of their employees and their families laughing only to find out none of those employees work there any longer and the pictures were taken on their once-every-10-years retreat at a cheap hotel in MO or WY.