Why founder owned hosting still matters

Most of the hosts you have heard of are owned by someone you have not. A handful of holding companies bought the industry over the last decade, and the logos stayed the same while the people behind them changed.

I have run hosting companies for almost twenty years, through more than one of those cycles. What I keep coming back to is simple. When a company is owned by the people who answer the phone, the answers are different. There is no quarterly pressure to trim the support team or bury the cancel button.

Independence is not a marketing line. It is who decides, and what they optimise for. This is the case for staying founder owned on purpose, and what it actually buys the customer.