I've bootstrapped everything I've ever built. Yet, I constantly get investor pitches from bootcamp/accelerators/etc.
One of them I got just the other day put forward this interesting offer: "$25K for 6% equity" on my current bootstrapped project which is earning about $20k per month in profit.
Thanks, but no thanks!
> A budding minority within the tech community ... supplies an alternative:<p>A nice article (I am a fan of anything that supports reading!) but seriously, bootstrapping has been the <i>default</i> since literally forever (i.e. presumably since the beginning of commerce, before the invention of reading). Tons of successful businesses have been built that way, they may just not look that way to you.<p>Consider that many may be bootrapped businesses that <i>later</i> wanted money to grow more rapidly than organically. As companies like that will have already demonstrated market value and execution ability they can typically get better valuations than just a PPT or a PPT+MVP
Founder of Readwise here -- just posted this article from ~10 months ago on a whim. Happy to answer any qs or chat about how the decision to start bootstrapping has gone since then (well!)
> Now that we're bootstrapping, we've shifted away from a freemium business model (where users could optionally pay if they wanted) to a paid-only model after a free trial.<p>I think this is great, and where venture capital fails; having real demand and not only focus on growth.
Often I'll buy a non fiction book solely so I can evangelize some best practice or methodology by sharing the book around.<p>I still buy physical non fiction books because physical ones are just so much more easier to share without worrying about copyright infringement.<p>Barring physical, I'd use Amazon precisely because it's easier to "lend" someone a book if you're both on the same platform.
<i>VC is known for loving bold, humanitarian visions, and a startup with the mission to reinvent books should be a great fit, right?</i><p>I can't tell if this is supposed to be sarcastic or not.
readwise is so good that even though I LOVE physical books, I don’t buy them anymore. They wouldn’t get into my Readwise notes, which is now a crucial part of my daily workflow.
Oh man, I’d never heard of Readwise before but this seems so useful! I love things like highlights and notes on the Kindle, and how words you look up are added to a special list for review later, but I never could figure out a simple way to take advantage of that later. Does Readwise also handle that new word use case? I love expanding my vocabulary and tend to exclusively read on a Kindle.
This is a great post. The fact that you're bootstrapping is nice but I love how clear you are on why you're doing that and how it helps your business.