Building a startup? It is for your customers, not for your investors. If I am to rank the hierarchy in a startup, (Customers then employees then investors then founders). 

When founders raise money from an investor, they tend to build the startup for their investors. The entire startup depends on making the investor happy. 

In every case, a founder should know that an investor is more of an advisor. In many cases, they might offer good advice (and when this happens, you should work with that advice), but ultimately, the final decision will always be on the founder. This is because, you, as the founder will be left holding things together in case it goes north. 

So, you should take the investors' advice as just that, advice. Listen to the advice, internalize it and marinate on it. It is not effective to just downrightly dismiss an investor's advice. In case you think the advice is wrong, please offer an explanation and an alternative route. Then work with that. 

The most important thing is being receptive. A good aspect of any founder is being coachable. But being coachable doesn't mean simply being a doormat. You should stand your own ground when you think there is a better way to do something, and when this happens please explain. 

The most important people when building a startup are your customers. Your customers can make or break a company. Any startup with a large pool of paying customers will survive even without external funding. If there is one group of people that any startup founder should listen to, then it is the customers. 

The customers do not lie. They will only part with their money if the product solves a problem once paid for. And if a startup is making good revenue from customers, the investors will automatically be happy. They might advise you less because you are doing the right thing. 

Then the next people on the list are the employees. This is simple because the employees will also be in the trenches with you every day. It is very important to keep them happy through the right compensation, building a good working environment and ensuring their growth. 

This article isn't to say that investors are not important. Certainly, they are. Without investor money, the startup may not be in a position to grow as fast as the founders would love. Growing using revenue is what is called bootstrapping, but bootstrapping is slow and painful. Investors can make a startup grow in three years when ideally the same milestones could have taken a decade. 

But at the same time, in your own building journey, you should know that your customers and employees certainly come first. They will make or break your startup. No amount of funding can help a startup founder if the startup doesn't have paying customers or if the work culture is toxic. Ultimately, even with funding, such a startup will fail. The startup graveyard is full of well-funded startups because of this. So don't build the startup for your investors, build it for your customers first, and then the employees. Once this is achieved, the investors will be very happy as a secondary recipient of your hard work in the primary areas.