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| Fine Art America vs Sillicon Valley |
From the Founder/CEO of Fine Art America and Pixels.com, Sean Broihier.
Fine Art America produces museum-quality artprints since 2006 and is one of the only major POD (print-on-demand) companies that has never raised money from investors.
What is admirable about Fine Art America - aside from producing high-quality artprints - is the fact that to this date:
- was built by a single programmer in 2006
- is run by just 8 employees
- is profitable
- has zero debt
- doesn't have any investors
- doesn't have any connection to Silicon Valley
- never raised money
- is a privately held company
- 100% self-funded
- fully automated
- highly diversified (18 companies into one) online, offline, mobile, and streaming.
Despite being 100% independant and "under-funded", they succcessfully competed against tech giant corporations with hundreds of employees and hundreds of millions in venture capital.
Sillicon Valley mentality
- raising millions of dollars from investors in venture capital
- hiring 50+ employees
- spending millions of dollars on your website, product development, and advertising
- Maybe someday, figuring out how to make money...
The fact and the matter is that raised money isn't yours. It's the money of your new bosses - your investors and board of direction that you have to answer to. You're now an employee that lose a lot of his control to new bosses.
Against conventional wisdom (Sillicone Valley, Shark Tank, MBA, Wall Street, etc), maybe raising capital is a sign of weakness. A sign that your company isn't profitable and that you need outside money to keep it alive?
Fine Art America stated that the secret to its success is that they never raised money. FAA success formula is to be lean, automated, highly diversified, and profitable.
The founder/builder of FAA was a one man operation with absolutely no money and no connection in the art world and the internet world. Instead of spending months chasing investors, he simply choose to build his business.
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| Fine Art America vs Venture-Backed Startup: David trashing Goliath |
Being My Own Boss and Keeping Control Of My Baby (my Business)
By the way, if your business is actually worth 15x your annual profits. What those money-bleeding Sillicone Valley tech giants are really worth?
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