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I keep seeing headlines about tech companies and startups shifting away from hyper-growth and focusing more on profitability and sustainability. With interest rates up and funding harder to come by, is the era of “grow first, profit later” over?

For those of you running businesses or working in VC/startups: are you actually seeing this shift on the ground, or is it just media hype? Are investors really prioritizing cash flow now over user growth?

Would love to hear what people in different industries are seeing.

I’ve worked with multiple early-stage companies that rushed to adopt “AI tools” to speed up their workflows.

But what actually slowed them down? • No standardized invoice approval process
• Expenses routed through Slack messages
• Vendor tracking in 5 different spreadsheets
• No ownership over who approves what

Some companies do not recognise that their tools weren’t the problem their process was. AI can’t fix disorganized teams. It can only accelerate the chaos if your foundation is messy.

What’s one process you fixed before you automated it? Or… did you automate before fixing? I am curious how other startups tackled this.

I run a small tech company focused on website design, branding, SEO, that kind of work. Most of our work is handled in-house, and we’ve built a solid reputation, especially with long-term clients.

One of those clients, someone I’ve worked with for a year and also consider a good friend, recently came to me asking for a mobile app for his business (we already did the website and branding for him for same startup). I was transparent from the start: we’d handle the app design internally, but the development side would be executed by a vetted external team we manage on our end. I have strong knowledge of development, but haven’t needed a full-time in-house mobile team until now.

He seemed fine with that at first. I put together a detailed proposal, and it was nearly approved, until he suddenly asked to meet the external developers. I politely declined, saying we’d handle communication, project management, and quality control just like we always do. But he saw this as a “red flag” and said it was a problem that I wouldn’t introduce him to the devs directly.

This put me in a weird spot. I always aim to be transparent with clients, especially close ones, but also, I don’t think I’m obligated to expose backend partnerships, especially if I’m leading and owning the deliverables. It felt like a boundary was crossed.

Now I’m wondering… was I in the wrong for not letting him meet the devs? Or was he expecting too much just because we’ve worked together for a long time? I wanted to be firm on my principles.

Curious to hear what others think, especially if you run a creative or service-based business and have dealt with similar situations.

I work with a local firm (think retirement planning, some investment advising, not hedge fund-level stuff), and we’ve been paying for SEO for like 7 months now.
Traffic’s gone up a bit, but it’s mostly blog hits from halfway across the country.
We’re not a content brand. We want qualified local leads. I don’t care if someone from Oregon reads "5 retirement myths" if they’re never gonna call.

The agency sends reports with all the usual stuff (impressions, bounce rate, rankings) but we’ve gotten maybe 2 decent leads that we could even possibly trace back to organic.

Anyone here actually run SEO for a small/regional financial firm and saw it bring real people to your door or to your booking form? Not "brand awareness", not "domain authority", but actual new clients