“It's much cheaper to fund your growth from your customers than it is from the venture market and that wasn't always true because the venture market cost of capital used to be very low and is now very high all of a sudden.”

Profit Is the New Growth — Fund Acquisition From Customers, Not VCs

Phil argues the venture environment of 2022 (high cost of capital) forces a reversal of the prior decade's logic: when VC was cheap, deferring monetization was rational. Now it's not. Companies that built on the assumption of perpetual cheap funding are being squeezed — while those that treated customer revenue as their primary growth engine are compounding. This reframes subscription revenue not just as a business model, but as the most durable source of operating leverage.