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I'm struggling to think of why a startup would want to do this? What's it achieve?



Maybe everyone doesn't act with great strategies and achieving things in mind? Maybe they just want to be transparent and share their journey?


How much money they are making is a pretty minor aspect of transparency which doesn't seem to serve much purpose except to satisfy peoples curiosity (and possibly act as a vanity metric which I feel Ghost's example reads a bit like).

Here in the UK all Ltd companies (and most startups are Ltd) have public accounts, customers in B2C businesses in my experience tend to not look up and read them because at the end of the day it's not important for them.

Publicising them so openly seems like it could backfire and create problems. Customers demanding more, putting a target on yourself for patent trolls, another thing to maintain which could go wrong/mislead etc etc.

Cynics might argue they are not doing this for customer transparency, but as an attempt to put themselves on the radar for potential investors/acquirers.


They raised money through Kickstarter, so they should answer and report to their stakeholders and have the obligation to update them with the progress/challenges they're facing/seeing in their venture.


Stakeholders? Did Kickstarter suddenly change its spots?


No, he obviously means the backers who have a stake in the thing they backed. Doesn't have to be a legal stake.


Another fine example of this is Cushion, where his running expenses are presented (without revenues) http://cushionapp.com/expenses


Isn't achievement the point of a company?


No, the point of a company is what its owner(s) have in mind.

Some could just want freedom from being employees, and could be satisfied with just basic revenues to get by.

Others might want to change the world in a positive (as they see it) way with their product (e.g. help save the environment).

Others might want to be millionaires, etc.




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