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I don't really see the point of raising money if you aren't going to go all in and try to build a billion dollar startup. As soon as you raise you are locking

I don't really see the point of raising money if you aren't going to go all in and try to build a billion dollar startup. As soon as you raise you are locking yourself to the idea you are selling for at least 7 years. If you are lucky, you can extract some money via a secondary to buy a modest house 3 years into it as a founder. You now have a heavy responsibility to your investors and employees to be a steward of their capital. All the code you've written now belongs to the company rather than yourself. Meanwhile, if you bootstrap as a solo founder, you have optionality. If the business makes a profit you can now just deposit that in your bank account. If you get bored after 2 years you can leave the business on autopilot and repurpose the code you've written to try other ideas. If the product does take off you always have the option to spin it off into its own llc and raise money for it (or just sell it outright). The threshold for success is so much lower, you only need a few thousand paying customers to sustain one developer (you). Of course the obvious challenge with going this route is that you actually have to be able to execute on your own idea.

sschueller 3y ago
If you bootstrap you can also build something that actuality solves a problem and isn't focused on extracting maximum profit by becoming another middleman no one needs.
- brigadier132 3y ago
  This is true, a lot of people say a business' purpose is to maximize profit for shareholders. The truth is a business' purpose is whatever the owners of the business want. If you go and raise money from a bunch of people who's literal job is to make more money then the purpose of your business will become to make more money for the new owners (stakeholders) of the business. Not saying the profit incentive is necessarily a bad thing.
JumpCrisscross 3y ago
> don't really see the point of raising money if you aren't going to go all in and try to build a billion dollar startup Angel investor here. I've had startups ask me about a $10mm exit. The team was tired. I'm not running a professional portfolio. I said go for it. I approximately 2x'd my money over as many years, while the founders became millionaires. (To be clear, I was being asked for advice. The founders had complete agency.) None of those businesses, mind you, were compatible with bootstrapping. (And to the extent a business can be bootstrapped, I won't invest in it. Because that reflects its barriers to entry.)

sschueller 3y ago

If you bootstrap you can also build something that actuality solves a problem and isn't focused on extracting maximum profit by becoming another middleman no one needs.

brigadier132 3y ago
This is true, a lot of people say a business' purpose is to maximize profit for shareholders. The truth is a business' purpose is whatever the owners of the business want. If you go and raise money from a bunch of people who's literal job is to make more money then the purpose of your business will become to make more money for the new owners (stakeholders) of the business. Not saying the profit incentive is necessarily a bad thing.

JumpCrisscross 3y ago

> don't really see the point of raising money if you aren't going to go all in and try to build a billion dollar startup Angel investor here. I've had startups ask me about a $10mm exit. The team was tired. I'm not running a professional portfolio. I said go for it. I approximately 2x'd my money over as many years, while the founders became millionaires. (To be clear, I was being asked for advice. The founders had complete agency.) None of those businesses, mind you, were compatible with bootstrapping. (And to the extent a business can be bootstrapped, I won't invest in it. Because that reflects its barriers to entry.)