Ask HN: Should I raise, stay bootstrapped or quit?
I am Anthony, solo French founder of LiNote. We build a device so obvious to use really old people ( 75 to 100 ) can use it even with cognitive diseases. Their caregivers can video call them, send them reminders, pictures, etc.
I've been working on it for 5 years now. Our MRR is now over 12kE. We were at 4kE a year ago. Our 350 customers love it and talk about us a lot. Yet we are growing slowly at 5-8% a month.
Our team is 4 people only: 1 dev 1 content marketing my girlfriend at operations and simple customer supports me at tech support and "CEO stuffs".
My girlfriend and I love what we do but we provide support 7 day a week, 24H a day. We have worked every day for the last 18 months.
We are about to get cash positive. We haven't raised money but from family. I am now able to pay my girlfriend and I enough to live decently but far from what I use to earn as a python dev.
We aren't at product market fit yet but our retention is great and we think we are on something but our dev is busy with bug fixes and tiny improvements.
I am getting worse at selling my vision the more operational tasks I do and the more time I struggle with the company. 1000 of customers seems far when you fight for 20 each months.
I've talked with local investors but that didn't work 3 times. I wasn't really committed and feel disconnected to their way of thinking ( hire blindly, build partnerships with big companies). Local investors doesn't seems knowledgeable.
I can't decide between staying bootstrapped which fit us better but the road seems so long before being able to live comfortably and before being able to hire new critical people.
Raising money is a good option to grow faster but not being at product-market fit seems like a non-optimal time to raise. I sometimes feel like I am being stubborn and if anything big should have happen, it would have already happened before.
I am sure the HN crowd would have insightful comments.