Hacker News Reader

Congratulations. I can relate with your journey - going from living in cockroach-infested apartments to bootstrapping a $70m ARR business. Random question, but do you think it's feasible to go public without institutional investors? My co-founder & I have been seeing a ton of businesses with seriously weaker financial metrics going through SPAC's (see GETR). But, we're wondering if this outcome is gated by first raising from VC or PE.

View on HN

Is it possible yes. You do not need VC to go public. It’s not a requirement.

Also this whole journey started a decade ago. There are many more avenues for liquidity and for raising capital. However it is a bit gated.

However if you have good advisors and ensure you retain control with board structure and dual class voting shares you shouldn’t look at as a negative

Thank you. We turned down VC because we're concerned about the stranglehold they have on exit outcomes. I guess everything is negotiable, and I need to get better at communicating our concerns around control in a way that builds trust with investors. It's cool that you're open to having conversations like this. I imagine when you're publicly successful, you get inundated with people seeking help.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com