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Comment by whoisjuan | Hacker News Reader

This reads like a rant out of frustration for not being able to raise money (and newsflash, if raising money is hard, no doubt raising in Montreal is near to impossible), but I think the author nailed it with this paragraph:

"The problem, with the Big Lie, is that it kills a lot of startups that end up building their strategy around a capital infusion that will never come, and end-up wasting a lot of time trying to fundraise. Some of those startups would have had a better shot had they focused on sales. It’s still super hard, but the odds are better. The problem is that bootstrapping success stories often remain unknown, as the valuation of those startups is never announced in press releases."

This is so true. Most people I know that have founded startups that later failed were working towards having something decent to show to institutional investors instead of focusing on understanding their customers.

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> bootstrapping success stories often remain unknown

Bingo. I don't even want to be noticed (hence this throwaway account).

My startup has taken over an entire national B2B SaaS market segment but our major competitor hasn't realised yet. They deal in many segments and are a classic incumbent dinosaur, and were recently acquired so their attention is elsewhere. We've done no marketing, never been mentioned in any press, raised no capital. All growth purely by referrals. The more market share we can collect before the dinosaur notices I kicked its tail, the better. We're 100% bootstrapped, debt and dilution free and planning to stay that way, and to remain submarine as long as possible. As a result I'm entirely focused on serving our customers and improving the platform and our organisation to suit them, not running around wasting founder energy chasing investors and trying to dress up the company to look pretty for VCs.

Sounds like a good strategy. Are you profitable at this point?

That's too bad about "bootstrapping" - it's a good userID!

That's one thing about bootstrapping, your P&L practically mirrors the cashflow statement so we had to be profitable from the get-go. We're well past that take-off stage where I was unsure if the business was going to fly or not, so now I'm following the Bezos strategy of re-investing all earnings back into the company (sure beats coughing up income taxes). So yes, with the caveat that I'm not paying myself a cent, since as majority shareholder I think of equity as my comp, it's profitable.

It helped a lot that on Day One we had $5000 of AWS credits, two founders with spare time and tons of business & tech experience, a market segment ripe for the picking, an enthusiastic (and well-connected) launch customer for the MVP, and disruptive home-grown IP that created more customer value (even in MVP form) than anything else on the market. I couldn't have asked for better initial conditions for a bootstrapped company.

(yes I was surprised the account ID wasn't taken already. maybe I won't throw it away)

This is just another article that causes me to kick myself. I graduated from Stanford in 2010 but now am a pretty average, non-Silicon Valley programmer because I didn't want to do anything after graduating from college.

Well, take heart that just being from Stanford isn't a guarantee. If anything the middle-of-the-road job you have now is more of an ironclad guarantee than any VC-funded startup. Plus, you got to do what you wanted after college instead of flailing around and getting burned out.

On the other hand, a Stanford degree is a signal, and will still serve you well for quite a few years yet. My name-brand diploma is decades old but I'm pretty sure it still gets me second looks and interviews more often than I'd care to admit.

Why does this make you kick yourself? This is a guy writing an internet rant about how frustrated he is with the life you choose not to live.

I think the implication is that as a Stanford grad he had a pedigree that would have increased his chances of getting funded... but he didn't have any ideas, so now he's using his name-brand degree to do the type of work that a degree from any school would have been fine for.

If he or she does have some good ideas later, that real-world industry experience might come in handy.

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