ArsDigita: From Startup to Bust-Up (2001)

As I see it VC is about funding a company in advance, so you can afford to build your business, while bootstrapping is about funding the company operationally (“organically”), building it as you go. Not all companies can be bootstrapped because they can have high capital costs (eg building a new fab, hiring experts), timing pressure (eg first mover advantage) or other reasons. One bad reason for getting VC funding is that some people think VC funding is cool or necessary to start a business, which is not true - but that’s beside the point.

So VC is really like a layer above bootstrapping. In a bootstrapped company you’ve already sorted your seed capital (maybe you pitched in 10k for AWS hosting) and you’re not looking for more. So you focus on operational issues like growth channels and customer acquisition.

In a VC company you need to focus on funding issues first - this much investment will yield this much profit, the company is worth $Valuation, so investors putting in $Investment should get S% (=I/V) of shares. The phrases you’ve highlighted like “pitch deck” are just the ways that a company communicates the how the operational aspects of the business will lead to growth of $V over time (resulting in growth of $I since S% remains fixed). The pitch deck might include things like CAC - customer acquisition cost - but the VCs are looking for a financial return, which they get when they “exit” (ie, sell their shares). The exit strategy suggests who investors might sell to, in order to “liquidate” the increased value of S%.

So in effect the two kinds of startup do indeed define success differently. If you have a successful bootstrap business then you just end up doing all the same things later, if you want to sell your business. So it’s the order of things that’s different but you end up worrying about the same basic data.

I want to add that not all VC funded companies have “problems”. I mean most name brand companies that we use daily were backed by VCs. The problems start when your VCs are bad partners, or inexperienced, or you raise capital you don’t need, or you make promises you can’t deliver.

Plenty of organic non VC companies also have huge management problems. In fact I read the article and nodded my head to many things I’ve experienced in an organic company (I used to say that some people I worked with “would rather be right than rich” because they put ego above numbers)

VCs are one of several solitons to the problem of fundraising.

HTH

Edited for clarity

Because certain businesses bleed oceans of cash before they turn a profit. That can be a sound investment because when they do turn a profit, it's torrential.

Take Facebook. How could anyone possibly bootstrap a social network circa-2006? You have no eyeballs, so you can't advertise (if the Social Network is anything to go by, they tried that unsuccessfully). You have no product, so you can't sell anything directly. At best, you could do software consulting work - but then someone who is well-funded overtakes you easily, and given the "winner takes all" nature of social networks, you're dead on the vine.

Likewise, even when they do take VC, the next stage isn't necessarily "profit". If you can spend $1 today to generate $1.50 in revenue tomorrow, versus spending $1 today to (maybe) generate $15 in 5 years' time, VCs will prefer the latter.

For all intents and purposes, VC-funded startups are in an different industry from your average IndieHackers project. The former are racing the VC clock, so a lot of their time is spent playing the valuation game. The latter has the luxury of focusing on customers and small, sustainable growth. But that also means you're unlikely to see the next search engine or social network on IndieHackers.

And https://bazaarmodel.net/phorum/read.php?1,9