> whose only goal is profit maximization

It’s really a trade-off. If you raise too much money, you have to at least on paper show growth. All the levers then are tuned for growth.

On the other hand, you risk loosing out in the market if you raise just enough to build a viable product and get initial customers with the goal of growing organically.

Market rewards the winners. Look at Wiz, they captured the cloud security market by raising huge capital and moving fast.

Open source route is probably the way to go if you want to build a product based on your foundational ideas. Helps drive adoption organically and hopefully discover a monetisation opportunity.