I can understand how you might think investors mis-align the business with customers, but this isn't necessarily true.
First, businesses aren't in the business of leaving money on the table. That is fine for a non-profit, but ultimately they need to weigh money making with customer satisfaction and growth. It's crazy to think a business should not optimize here.
Second, you're conflating venture-funded consumer businesses with B2B businesses. Consumer businesses with venture funding are typically going to fuel growth/momentum by doing things which don't scale. But eventually push comes to shove. B2B business models are usually more transparent about what is a promotion and what is not. Consumer businesses don't always know how the business model is going to play out to even offer that transparency.
Third, if your business model is advertising and data is your moat, then when you give away your data via API to promote distribution, yes you run into an issue later on when you need to advertise or you have underinvested somewhere (in Reddit's case it was mobile). For Reddit or Twitter, these mobile apps were profiting off their users/data while taking on none of the costs (infrastructure, moderation, etc.), and limiting their means of monetizing themselves. You don't need an investor to tell you that isn't in your long term interest.
First, businesses aren't in the business of leaving money on the table. That is fine for a non-profit, but ultimately they need to weigh money making with customer satisfaction and growth. It's crazy to think a business should not optimize here.
Second, you're conflating venture-funded consumer businesses with B2B businesses. Consumer businesses with venture funding are typically going to fuel growth/momentum by doing things which don't scale. But eventually push comes to shove. B2B business models are usually more transparent about what is a promotion and what is not. Consumer businesses don't always know how the business model is going to play out to even offer that transparency.
Third, if your business model is advertising and data is your moat, then when you give away your data via API to promote distribution, yes you run into an issue later on when you need to advertise or you have underinvested somewhere (in Reddit's case it was mobile). For Reddit or Twitter, these mobile apps were profiting off their users/data while taking on none of the costs (infrastructure, moderation, etc.), and limiting their means of monetizing themselves. You don't need an investor to tell you that isn't in your long term interest.