Comment by juliansimioni
21 hours ago
Fellow bootstrapped founder for 8 years here, and I love and agree with your responses here.
Having previously existed in the VC-backed startup world, one thing I don't miss is the belief that its the _only_ rational way to run a business. In reality there are a lot of dangers to that approach, like you pointed out.
VCs _need_ promising businesses to join their portfolio, so they'll always be trying to convince you to raise money and have a tiny shot at making it big. If you fail, well, you're just one business in their portfolio, another one will pick up the loss. But it's the _only_ company you have, so you are doing the right thing by growing sustainably.
There's something extremely freeing about running a bootstrapped business and knowing you don't _need_ anyone to keep it running. Cheers to the next 10 years for you and your team.
BTW, I completely agree with this. VC economics create misalignment with founders as a matter of economics -- sometimes that's good, sometimes it's bad, but it's incredibly important for a founder to understand. I usually tell younger investors and entrepreneurs that they should think long and hard on the research that says a seed stage fund needs ~50 portfolio companies to get past random bad luck; it has implications for how you manage a fund, and how you think about founding one of those 50 companies both.