No one cares that you're a unicorn

Or: fundraising is not success

When we closed our Series C in March, Pilot’s new valuation was $1.2 billion. With Bezos Expeditions and Whale Rock joining the cap table, we officially achieved unicorn status.

Here’s the thing, though: fundraising is not success.

Yes, fundraising can be great for team morale, for recruiting, for press coverage, and for customer momentum (and these are all reasons I am excited about our new unicorn status), but “you raised money” is not the same as “you are actually succeeding.” 

The only way to build a successful company is to build a product that your customers love and want to pay you money for. Anything else—including fundraising—is a distraction from that mandate. Sometimes those distractions are necessary, but they are distractions nonetheless.

The job of a founder is a tough one: you’re constantly selling your vision to your employees, your investors, and your customers—and you have to do so so persuasively and convincingly. Of course your company is going to be phenomenally successful. But you also have to think critically about the current state of your business, soberly analyze its strengths and weaknesses, and continue to invest aggressively in making the company grow.

If you think you’ve “made it” because you raised $X, or you have VC Y as an investor, or you were on so-and-so’s list of Next Big Companies, you can get complacent and lazy—and that’s when you’ll find yourself in trouble. The market doesn’t care how much money you raise or whether you’re a unicorn. It only cares about whether you’re building a product that people want to buy.

Unicorn status is a milestone to (perhaps) pass along the way in your journey of building a successful company—it’s not the destination.

My advice for when you hit an exciting fundraising milestone: savor the moment, then get back to it. There’s still a lot of hard work ahead.