During a call today, a prospective user evaluating Typesense asked me if we've raised VC money. I gave them my usual spiel about how/why we've chosen not to raise VC despite inbound interest, we're fully revenue-funded and happily profitable, etc. Then they tell me that the actual reason they asked me this question was because another vendor they had relied on had raised VC in the past, and then shutdown recently because they couldn't pull together their next VC round. This was quite something because, in the past, when I used to get the "Are you VC funded" question, it would come from a position of customers trying to size us up and validate our financial viability. Now the same question seems to be coming from a position of customers trying to determine how much of a risk they're willing tolerate when doing business with VC-funded companies. As much as VCs like to glorify VC-backed companies, rug-pull after rug-pull in VC-backed SaaS I think has made customers pretty wary of VC-backed companies.