Ask HN: Are there investment possibilities for lifestyle businesses?
TL;DR; I'm running out of resources, need investment, not sure I want to scale like crazy and shoot for a unicorn IPO, are there investors that fund businesses looking to turn a profit rather than exit?
In detail; I've been trying to bootstrap my product idea to profitability, but I'm now 6 months in, and only have a proof of concept that is demo-able but not properly usable yet. I need another 6 months or so to finish the development and start on the promotion. I'd really prefer not to have the distraction of going back to contracting work, so I'm thinking of shifting to working on my pitch and trying to find interested angel / VC investors. After watching the first two talks of YC investment school, I notice the huge focus on investment that revolvs around the anticipation of future investment rounds, acquisitions, IPO's, etc. This doesn't fit my early ideas or just getting enough investment to bootstrap to a profitable company.
Do you think there are investors out there that would be interested in this mindset of growing a company, or is there nothing in it for the investor if the founders goal is simply achieving a level of sustainable success and profitability without incurring 100s of millions of dollars of debt and future investment? Perhaps I need to point my aim a lot higher a lot sooner to coincide with investor desires.