Balancing investors’ expectations for growth and revenue with maintaining our brand narrative comes down to clear communication and a shared vision. At BibliU, we prioritize long-term value over short-term gains by ensuring our growth strategies align with our mission to make education more accessible and affordable for all. By staying focused on our core values and consistently delivering on our promises, we build trust with both our investors and customers.
Dave Sherwood
Founder & CEO, BibliU
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It’s a constant balancing act. As a founder, you’re always juggling the demands of growth and profitability with the need to stay true to the brand’s mission and values. For us at Numan, the key has been to align our business goals with our core mission. It means that every growth decision and every brand decision has to put the patient-first and align with our overall goal to help everyone live healthier, happier, longer lives.
It’s also crucial to maintain transparency with investors about why certain decisions are made. Early on, I made it clear that while we’re pursuing growth, it has to be done in a way that upholds our commitment to clinical integrity and patient outcomes. There’s no point scaling rapidly if it means compromising the quality of care or losing the trust of our users
Ultimately, it’s about ensuring that the metrics investors care about – revenue, margins, and growth – are achieved by staying true to our core principles. By focusing on patient-first innovation and being transparent with both our team and our investors, we’ve been able to drive growth in a way that doesn’t just look good on a balance sheet, but also reinforces our brand’s authenticity and brings us closer and closer to realising our mission too.
Sokratis Papafloratos
Co-Founder & CEO, Numan
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Fundraising should never be a goal in itself, but rather an enabler for the next stage of the business—whether in revenue, growth, product development, talent, or brand. It’s crucial to align with new investors on these goals ahead of the fundraise to avoid conflicts over business objectives and most importantly the long-term vision. We’ve been in the fortunate position to be able to choose who we want to raise from, including most of the tier 1 VCs in the world, and have been vetting them as thoroughly as they’ve vetted us.
Cedrik Hoffmann
Co-Founder & CEO, Ameba
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In the end, investors, and their money, is just a piece of the puzzle. You should never manage your company to please anyone, this includes investors. Brand narratives can be powerful a tool but can also destroy your company. What really counts is your long term plan and vision and how you build around that.
Philippe Gelis
CEO, Kantox
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We originally bootstrapped our company, which instilled a focus on sustainable growth from the start. Our investors have been incredibly supportive, helping us scale responsibly while aligning with our core values. We prioritize high growth and revenue, but never at the expense of building a long-term, value-driven business for our customers. This balanced approach ensures we remain true to our brand narrative while creating a company that lasts and provides our clients with excellent service.
Jonathan Shapiro
Co-Founder, Optalitix
