3 ms·
No one claims you need to be in SV or raise VC to bootstrap your way to make a living (or even be wildly rich). It's a lot harder to create a company with an en
by austenallred 11y ago
No one claims you need to be in SV or raise VC to bootstrap your way to make a living (or even be wildly rich). It's a lot harder to create a company with an enormous impact that scales quickly without doing so, however. And this is coming from the founder of a VC-backed company not in the Valley.
It's all about what you're aiming for. I have to make a living, but I want to change the world. To do that my company would have to scale more quickly than revenue would allow, so I must raise VC.
- MichaelCrawford 11y agoWould you regard it as a wise investment to put your entire life savings on a single spin of the wheel at Vegas? While you may not lose actual money with a failed startup - that is, if you have the G-d Given Sense to save some of your salary - failed startups, even many successful ones have many other costs. A close friend and coworker at Live Picture became homeless. He's doing well now but when he told me of his plight I was concerned he would take his own life. Consider the essays the Elon Musk's ex-wife likes to write about how to become a billionaire. My own divorce had quite a lot to do with my own effort to succeed in business. I did not have funding because I did not pursue it, but had I sought funding our marriage would not have lasted as long as it did.
- MichaelCrawford 11y agoWhile Siddartha Gautama had funding, Jesus Christ did not.
- krampian 11y agoAgain this is not black and white. There are plenty of non-VC funded companies that scaled quickly and had enough of an impact that you could say they "changed the world" to some extent. There are plenty of VC-funded companies that went nowhere and changed nothing except the returns of their VC funds (for the worse).