> Then they would talk about LOI, ROI, NDAs, IPOs, and all kinds of things that also had nothing to do with actually helping people.<p>Coming from a bootstrap background, I feel that VC backed companies have a tendency to focus way too much on <i>vanity metrics</i>. KPIs that make the buisness look successful, without measuring real conversions. It's like building a business purely to make a nicer looking pitch deck.<p>That, plus way too much emphasis on the financial/equity structure of the startup. Founders are carving out employee option pools before making their first dollar. And this focus on equity/investment/reporting becomes the CEO's full time job, when it should have been dedicated to customers.
VC's invest in 30 companies to find 1 unicorn on average. The profit on that one justifies the investment in the 29 others.<p>Problem is that no one knows which one is going to be the hit in the pack of 30. So VC's push all ceo's to grow as fast as possible to find out as soon as possible who will succeed/fail.<p>Great for the VC, too bad for the 29 unlucky ones.<p>Never be the agenda of someone else, be your own agenda.<p>I never understand why so few people see this.
>the desks were just planks of wood on cinderblocks from the hardware store<p>While used as an example of bootstrapping, I have to say that one of my favorite desks ever was a solid-core door on cinderblocks.<p>You can adjust the height to your specifications with bricks or wood shims; the cinderblocks can become cubbies for holding various bits and bobs; you can paint the door whatever color you want cheaply; it can take a huge load, as I had two giant 20" Radius monitors on it.<p>I even experimented with giving the desk a slight upward angle with shims, which worked pretty well.
I agree with a lot of the spirit in the article but I don't think learning to code from a book because you can't afford a dev is not a great example.<p>How many people lost their crypto-currency because the exchanges were written by people with no experience/training in development (or security specifically).<p>The counter-point is to buy in people who can do better than you can for less money. In other words, if a Developer can build what you need in 1 week for $1000 (in 90s money!) what would otherwise take you 6 weeks, are you saving money or wasting it? We don't always count our own time as money but it is if you could be much better placed to sell or market your business.
My co-founder recently wrote about our deliberations on fund raising as an open source company here: <a href="https://typesense.org/blog/why-we-are-not-raising-funds/" rel="nofollow">https://typesense.org/blog/why-we-are-not-raising-funds/</a><p>Ultimately, there is no golden rule. One has to choose what's best for your customers and your stage of growth.
> Never forget that absolutely everything you do is for your customers. Make every decision — even decisions about whether to expand the business, raise money, or promote someone — according to what’s best for your customers.<p>Right, this isn't really about whether or not you take growth funding. This is about minimalism and focus.<p>The fact that some people who take venture funds see fit to use those funds in a vain way, doesn't mean that you're forced to use that kind of funding in a vain way. Indeed, you're more likely to succeed if you use the funding modestly, with humility, focused on where it can provide the most business growth.
Totally agree. I think this crazy belief about raising money as a priority was driven by the low interest rate environment and broad acknowledged success of big tech. With lots of money every body wants to find next Google and are willing to invest.
At the same time, having a loss company is not anymore a shame, it’s a success because also AMZN was unprofitable.<p>I really hope in next years, with higher interest rate, financial markets downturns will bring attention to profitable and bootstrapped companies.
There's also a disadvantage which is that you worry day to day about finding salary at the end of each month. I found at my startup this made it difficult to concentrate on the bigger picture of developing the product.
> their weekly promotion parties<p>Yes! So much free money flowing into startups that it can be hard to trust the rapid-ascent careers of people who just locked into that business early on and are now key, but only for that business.
oh course the rub here is that you need to have money to spend to bootstrap, which implies being able to save enough money to bootstrap, which not everyone can do.
There's also the worry of having TOO MUCH funding- Chip Wilson (LuLuLemon founder) had this problem with his second company Kit and Ace. They didn't have the same edge that they had when they started LuLu.<p>The confine of having little to no funding forces you to be agile and creative.
yep, this is common sense. now the next article we have someone will complain that they dedicated their life to some dumb startup and rejected funding and "their life is ruined" because they didnt take the easy $300K starting salary to make a techspam company.