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Comment by codegeek | Hacker News Reader

I run a bootstrapped business and I hear you. However, VC Funding can make sense for certain cases. I do think that too many people raise VC prematurely. The best path in my opinion is:

0-PMF/100 customers: Bootstrap it

PMF-Scale: VC Fund if you can show 100% growth each year and forward. If the market is big enough (TAM etc), This can become a billion dollar company and for this to happen fast enough, you will need funding. Also, the reason you need funding here is because it is very tough to scale a business slowly. Either you grow fast from here or die/stay average growth.

Again, like you said, nothing wrong with "chart my own path" but VC funding has its needs. It's just that most people try to raise funding way too early and hence cannot keep up with the growth requirements and eventually either die or sell/pivot for peanuts.

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> PMF-Scale: VC Fund if you can show 100% growth each year and forward. If the market is big enough (TAM etc), This can become a billion dollar company and for this to happen fast enough, you will need funding. Also, the reason you need funding here is because it is very tough to scale a business slowly. Either you grow fast from here or die/stay average growth.

This makes sense, but I wonder how truly "necessary" funding is. I understand that funding very (relatively) quickly can help turn a "eating ramen for dinner" salary to a a-regular-job levels of salary which is very good. But is there a business risk to grow "organically"/through word of mouth? Assuming it is possible to grow the company only working part time (which is admittedly a very big assumption), bootstrapping sounds slightly better.

> It's just that most people try to raise funding way too early and hence cannot keep up with the growth requirements and eventually either die or sell/pivot for peanuts.

Thanks, that's insightful!

The business risk is that another company with more money and therefore resources will see your PMF and will move faster to capture the market.

Thanks, that makes sense. I would imagine patents could help somewhat but from what I've learnt they're not cheap and can still only help so much.

The thing with Funding is that you shouldn't really need it but it's more of a fuel when there already is fire (aka PMF). Once you have the fire (most people fail to get to this point anyway), then you decide if fueling that fire with VC dollars make sense or not for your goals.

The problem is that lot of entrepreneur need funding to even start because they don't have enough resources to start something (may be they need cash, people etc). But VC dont fund because you need cash. They fund because you are able to convince them somehow that you are building a unicorn.

Thank you, that makes sense. Btw is PMF = product market fit in this context?

> They fund because you are able to convince them somehow that you are building a unicorn.

I'm admittedly very naïve about this, but do they really expect this all the time? (Especially in physical and non-digital markets?) If you have a healthy growth and projection but no plans to say exceed 100M are you limited by how many VCs are interested?

The big VCs typically will expect extreme growth, because the big wins are needed to make up for the losses they will incur on many of the their other portfolio companies. That said, there are smaller VCs and private equity firms who will be happy to fund companies with lesser aspirations. Just don't expect comparably big valuations and you'll likely need to cede more control for less money.

Thanks!

"do they really expect this all the time"

This is an interesting question. I don't know if they believe but they def want to believe because without unicorns, they won't survive as most startups fail or have mediocre returns which is not enough for VCs to justify to their own investors/LPs.

Thank you, that makes sense.

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