To me it seems companies like Google that did that are rather the exception that confirms the rule - building a great business model should be a top priority.
You know what I consider a fun place to work? A company that doesn't have to borrow money to stay alive that also happens to work on cool projects. Even Mozilla is profitable; and even if their partnership with Google goes away in flames at some point, how fucked up is that?
Sometimes! Twitter has done pretty well with it so far. Depending on the specifics of your product you might fail. But my intuition is that making stuff people care about, and only monetizing where it's painless is a pretty airtight strategy, yes.
A company that doesn't have to borrow money to stay alive that also happens to work on cool projects
So you think the only two options are "sacrifice your community's goodwill" and "having enough money to stay alive"? I think there's a middle ground where you can leave some money on the table in order to stay focused on the stuff you care about, but still pay your bills.
To me it seems companies like Google that did that are rather the exception that confirms the rule - building a great business model should be a top priority.
You know what I consider a fun place to work? A company that doesn't have to borrow money to stay alive that also happens to work on cool projects. Even Mozilla is profitable; and even if their partnership with Google goes away in flames at some point, how fucked up is that?