Here’s a set of contrarian things we believe. They’re more tactical than cultural values, but each reflects an important truth about building companies that we think most people still get wrong.
We do things that don’t scale
We talk to customers, onboard them ourselves, and obsess over their experience—then build everything we learn back into the product. We would rather have a small number of customers who love us than a large number who merely like us. Those early customers give us the best feedback we will ever get, pull the product toward something more people want, and become the foundation for word-of-mouth growth.
Product > sales
The dirty secret of Silicon Valley is that with a good enough sales team, you can probably drag even a crappy product to $1M ARR. That is not the company we want to build. Our standard is simple: we build products we would recommend to our family and friends. The moment we stop doing that, everyone should probably quit. Marketing and sales are critical, but they cannot make customers love something they don’t want. At Replo, product comes first.
Most companies raise too much money
Most fundraising is a waste of time. Most founders fundraise with very little idea of what they plan to do with the money outside of some nebulous intent, like “growing the team.” Investors that get in at a certain price will want to see returns on that price.
Listen to customers, not investors
Investors trade on momentum. Customers trade on reality.
An investor can make a hundred bets and only needs one to work. To them, we’re one row in a spreadsheet—a zero is acceptable if another investment returns the fund. You don’t get twenty lives. You’re betting years of your time on one company.
We optimize for customers who really love our product. It’s easier to grow from ten customers who love us to a hundred than to turn a thousand ambivalent customers into evangelists. Fundraising can create momentum for a quarter. Customers who keep paying, complain when the product breaks, and tell their family and friends about Replo create something more durable.
It’s good to be a cockroach
In 2026, we often forget about 2008. Capital markets can disappear overnight, so we constantly ask: At our current revenue growth and spend, will we reach profitability before we run out of money? Fundraising can help us move faster, but our survival should never depend on it. Being a cockroach means staying cheap enough to survive long enough to figure out what the $100B opportunity is. Every dollar of recurring revenue buys us more time, more leverage, and more control over our own destiny.