Comment by abc123abc123

1 day ago

This is the way! As a fellow bootstrapper let me also add the infinite value of peace of mind. Your business is your own, and you can focus on earnings, quality of life, growth, what ever you like, without annoying VC:s and investors telling you what to do.

As soon as you take in money, the businesses at some level, ceases to be yours. The only flaw is that with bootstrapping and one step at a time, it is more difficult to reach the unicorn-level, but as long as you are fairly successful and don't have infinite cravings and desires in terms of the life you want to live, the bootstrapping way is _the_ way.

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abc123abc123

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switz  1 day ago

Fellow bootstrapper checking in. Made an ardent but delicate decision in 2015 not to raise money and ten years later I'm chugging along full-time on my business. Infinitely glad to have chosen this path. It was the right one for me.

  • theturtletalks  1 day ago

    Same, I learned to code to build software for my business. I turned it into a SaaS and turned down investment because my original business was already profitable and making the SaaS better was making the business better.

    This is why I trust software made by people who come from that industry or have some background. I’ve seen too many startups where the founders are fresh out of college and have never worked in that niche and have never been in the shoes of the people they are trying to sell to. To me, that just means they are trying to get big and get acquired, I’m just a means to that end.

steffoz  1 day ago

Unicorn-level sounds extremely stressful, happy to pass the burden to someone else. I seriously can't imagine a sane lifestyle that requires more money than what we already have.

  • jacquesm  1 day ago

    Not only that, the vast bulk of unicorn wanna-be's end up failing (sometimes failing upwards though) and then it is all for nothing.

    Aiming for the middle ground: reasonable growth, good financial strategies based on unit cost profitability and a very tight hand on the purse will get you a solid business that can serve as the jump off point for many other things on top of giving the founders a much better shot at financial independence. This is all a variation on the risk/reward theme.