raising money is to go fast and gobble up market share. If you don’t need to do that, then you don’t need to raise money.

I’m currently bootstrapping but pitched VCs more than once. I quickly realized that my open-source project turned company (with a SaaS) doesn’t have the hockey stick growth to be appealing to VCs. I’m also probably not a good pitcher. Despite reading a lot of books/blog, I had a hard time answering questions like what is your UVP, etc. Still, trying to raise fund made me realize things about my app, and refine my pitch, which is a net positive. But I still found it really hard!
I thought not raising funds was a failure at first, but then I remembered that it doesn’t equate success. Most funded companies still fail after a while. Sure, funders can probably pay themselves a salary, they also progress faster by hiring people, so it must be a nice journey overall. But in the end, they are in debt and need to generate a huge amount of money to satisfy their investors. I find Gumroad story quite interesting in this regard (https://sahillavingia.com/work).

Also, my app being open-source first, I don’t want to put this in jeopardy. Taking investments probably will. You just have to look at Vercel. Their tools are awesome, but more and more people are questioning their motives, and it’s obvious that VC funded open-source projects may shift priorities.

And after all, what I’m looking for is a life changing event. In the past I believed that life changing was raising fund and having a big exit.
But now, after working for two years full-time on my app, I realized that being able to work on what I like, without working for someone else, without having to endure the corporate bs, with a decent MRR, would be life changing enough. Only the decent MRR is missing, but I’m slowly getting there.

The question other people asked is important, do you need the money? Or, can you afford to bootstrap? I think, at least for me, that bootstrapping is slower. You need sustain yourself in the meantime. It’s harder to hire are you would be burning your own money, not someone’s else, money you need to sustain yourself. Sometimes it’s frustrating. I’m currently freelancing on the side and not burning any savings. I don’t earn as much as before but I see progress, so I’m still motivated.

Sometimes it’s frustrating. But I also know that I’m the only pilot. If I fail it will be on me, if I succeed, everything will be for me :)

I’m bootstraping. I have been offered for investment but I’m fine. People don’t invest on things that don’t work so why should I lose my company? But also I don’t need the money because I have several customers, if you can’t atract customers how do you expect to atract VCs?