You know that feeling when you finally hit a revenue milestone and think, "Okay, the hard part is over," only to realise the goalposts just moved?

It’s like the story of Stewart Butterfield before Slack was Slack.

He was building a game (Glitch) that was technically making money, but the growth was flat. He didn't wait for the revenue to hit a specific Series A number; instead, he looked at the internal velocity of how his team was using their communication tool and pivoted.

Investors didn't fund his current revenue; they funded the insane adoption speed of a tool that technically hadn't even launched as a standalone product yet.

I have seen this a lot. Most founders obsess over the what (our current ARR), but the VCs who actually write the big checks only care about the why (why is this moving so fast?).