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Comment by gkanai | Hacker News Reader

Building a bootstrapped business (i.e. NOT taking venture capital) is a rare skill. I would keep on building without outside capital if you can continue to build growth. If you hit a ceiling (without growth) then you may want to consider looking for/accepting outside capital.

As soon as you accept VC funding, there are basically 3 outcomes for your company. Getting acquired, going public (if that's an option where you are) or going bankrupt.

If you can keep growing without VC funding, I'd keep doing that.

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Good advice here.

> If you hit a ceiling (without growth) then you may want to consider looking for/accepting outside capital.

One other option at this point is to sell the whole business. For bootstrappers allergic to VC or lacking the drive/skill to scale further/faster, can be a nice outcome.

Seems to be a growing number of firms specializing in small saas acquisitions too (Tiny Capital comes to mind - no affiliation).

A third option would be: just not grow.

Exactly, why not build a solid product that serves a modest market and earns a steady revenue over a long term. You can focus on quality, features, innovation etc. and still run a sustainable business. Not everyone needs to grow all the times.

Growth is not everything. I remember reading "Let my people go surfing" by the Patagonia founder where he mentioned multiple times that they were trying to artificially limit their growth by raising the prices for their products. You don't need to chace ever higher profits. Staying small and enjoying your life is also an option.

This is done in tech, too: Scott McNealy famously raised the already-high prices of the new UltraSPARC powered Suns in the 90s because CPU production capacity was limited, and the products were wildly more popular than the company's expectations.

Rather than be faced with angry customers who couldn't take delivery, the price hike made sure that only the customers who really wanted the Ultra tech would be in line for it anyway. (It also removed incentives for the channel to illicitly take those higher margin dollars, when Sun needed them to grow capacity...)

FWIW, I've done between a half dozen to a dozen startups, some bootstrapped, some VC, and I can tell you that with very few exceptions, VC money is best avoided, or at least pushed out as far as possible. The chances of NOT getting pushed out as a technical founder (especially if you want to significantly influence what gets built and why) are pretty slim, and yeah, nothing wears you down quite like having to fight for influence in a company YOU created. Just dont' go there, unless you're really willing to put others in full charge of your baby.

There is nothing wrong with owning and running your own privately held company the way you see fit. (I had lunch recently with a founder who declined VC money because of the reasonable fear that the VCs would make his company "woke" (they pressed to rainbow-logo in June when negotiating the term sheet.) Since both the founders are fundamentally philosophically and religiously opposed to that worldview and will not tolerate it, they passed up the millions in seed/A to continue to grow organically. The company may grow a bit more slowly, but it will be a much stronger company growing it in a way the founders can live with.)

> One other option at this point is to sell the whole business.

There are many weird companies preying on tired execs with small-to-medium businesses that hit a plateau. Typically those businesses are gutted slowly over a few years after the acquisition so that they bring x times the purchase price ("undertakers of software industry" like CA or ESW etc.).

But if you get far enough, you can also contemplate a bank loan or loaning from a private person. I would not want to give away % if there is healthy income in the company and no drive to go nuclear (just healthy growth, which isn't 100%+/year as VC demand).

> Building a bootstrapped business (i.e. NOT taking venture capital) is a rare skill.

It is VC companies that are rare - the vast majority of businesses of any kind - and also internet businesses - are bootstrapped.

VC-backed businesses being more rare than bootstrapped ones does not reduce the rarity of a successful bootstrapped business or the skill needed to create one.

To your parent's point, it is likely a rarer skill to successfully bootstrap businesses than to take venture capital. The difference is opportunity. A plumber in Oklahoma can bootstrap a successful plumbing business, but wouldn't be likely to get venture capital for such a business.

The majority of small businesses are boot strapped. Only inside the tech bubble is it a rare skill.

or the fourth option of having your business taken away from you because of politics and watch some VC-approved idiot destroy it.

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