Are you VC-funded? No, we're profitable

&quot;Now the same question seems to be coming from a position of customers trying to determine how much of a risk they&#x27;re willing tolerate when doing business with VC-funded companies.&quot;<p>To be fair, this was one customer&#x27;s question, not necessarily a trend.<p>The merits of taking VC are debatable. But I don&#x27;t think we&#x27;re at a point where potential customers broadly are skeptical of a funded startup. If nothing else, it means someone, somewhere has vetted you and thinks you can deliver.

It&#x27;s a bit of a non sequitur: having a profitable business is ideal but if a startup can grow fast with VC money it can be acquired for 40x (Wiz) - 1000x (WhatsApp) revenue even if not profitable

I’m expecting this post to vanish from the home page any time now

Gotta love the feeling of having infinite runway.

It&#x27;s a cute quote, but it seems about 5 years out of date. There was a golden period for a while there that indie hackers and self-funded devs could create a useful product and grow it themselves and could &#x27;beat&#x27; VCs.<p>But now you can create some AI generated slop in a day that used to take months. Being an indie hacker used to be a sort of badge of honour, now it&#x27;s where everyone starts.<p>I think the VC-backed companies who have budgets to do actual marketing, actual sales, actual outreach beyond &quot;I have a good following on X, I&#x27;m gonna sell them stuff&quot; will win in the end.<p>As a customer, for me I don&#x27;t care whether the company is profitable, I care about whether it works, whether it&#x27;s in my budget, whether the company will be around in 2 years regardless of if the founder loses their passion for it.

It’s cool seeing a Houston startup too; I feel like the only ones I’ve ever seen have been self-funded

Where do people find good Indie hacking solopreneur support ?

VC-funded startups go out of business.<p>Bootstrapped startups go out of business.<p>While there is a large gap in the two models in terms of finances, operations and everything else, trying to argue that customers should pick your company purely because you haven&#x27;t raised money shows that you are either deliberately being insincere or know nothing about the industry, neither of which are great selling points.<p>If you want to compete, do it on the basis of features and value.