Is there anyway you could have bootstrapped the company? My issue with VCs isn't anything you focused on but instead the unfavorable terms. Liquidation preference and such.
Liquidation preferences are not unfavorable terms. A 1x non-participating liquidation preference is standard and protects investors against cheap acquihires founders would otherwise be inclined to take.
1x non-participating liquidation is not unfavorable. There are unfavorable terms (and historically it has been more common)...but yeah, that's very reasonable.
Yes - we bootstrapped Kapwing for months before deciding to raise. It wasn't an easy decision, but I think it was the right one for us at this point in our career. I wrote a post on this topic on the Kapwing blog you can check out.