111–120 of 123 posts
If it starts to become unenjoyable, or if you’re not capable of running it anymore, there will be plenty of companies willing to acquire it.
Consider coaching a wing-person so you can hand over the reins when the time comes. You don’t wanna be the single point of failure.
I'm a solo dev doing $700k yearly across two saas products. I'm also the founding engineer at Reforge (e.g. I've done the VC game from A16Z). There are two things I look at when raising VC. 1. What's the TAM of my product and will a capital injection get me there faster? 2. Do I actually want to raise capital or do I want to work at my own pace? The last couple of years (after Reforge), I've just been working at my o…
>2. Do I actually want to raise capital or do I want to work at my own pace? Haven't VC-backed companies crushed small developers in niche markets who refused to scale? In most instances
VC almost exclusively invests in businesses that have a large TAM (Total Addressable Market) and a VC is not invested in a business that has a small, niche market. The VC model is invest x millions, aim for one win in the billions that gets all the return to the fund, and then cut the losses for all the other fund’s investments that didn’t win big (wind-up or sell - recover the VCs preferential money and don’t give a shit if common share holders like founders get $0).
You're not a weirdo, but you should also be realistic that, if a megacorp wanted, they could easily create a subpar clone of your offering, and drive you to obsolescence with marketing within months. There was a recent story here on HN from someone who described just that. Can't remember the link, alas. EDIT: found it, see reply below.
Ah, I remembered I made an anki note about it, because I liked one of the quotes. Here you go: "Failure sneaks up on you slowly, then all at once." Andrew Wilkinson, founder of Flow (a distributed to-do list app), on how his company withered because he didn't consider cash-heavy competition to be comparable due to an (initially) worse product. From his Twitter thread "This is a story about how I lost $10,000,000 by d…
Also, they not only destroyed them on marketing, but the founder himself admitted that he noticed their product just got better over time plus they had core issues with their own product (no cross platform apps from the start, bugs, they had to rewrite all their clients) - so the competing offering was not sub-par, at least not in the long term and it turned out that the original product had issues before the competing product even arrived.
I'm curious though, are there any examples of a big corp cloning a small product and driving it out of existence? Or similar VC-backed vs. no VC-backed startups.
Find a group of likeminded bootstrapped founders who can support you in your journey. It's easier when you don't feel alone..
1. You really need it 2. You feel the VC can give you something nobody else can
When you take money from an investor you are selling YOUR own equity in turn reducing your ownership.
I am thankful to myself for ignoring VC funds and acquisition offers.
My advice would be to listen to yourself.
You should look into TinySeed. You’d get a little bit of money, great guidance on growing the SaaS. The terms are reasonable. They’re looking to generate same returns as VC funds, but without the swinging for the fences approach.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ah, I remembered I made an anki note about it, because I liked one of the quotes. Here you go: "Failure sneaks up on you slowly, then all at once." Andrew Wilkinson, founder of Flow (a distributed to-do list app), on how his company withered because he didn't consider cash-heavy competition to be comparable due to an (initially) worse product. From his Twitter thread "This is a story about how I lost $10,000,000 by d…
I remember it too. I think it's not purely the case you described in your first comment. We are talking bootstrapping here but they have poured 10M into it of their own money, which is not a bad funding round at all? The competing product was another startup, not a big co. Also, they not only destroyed them on marketing, but the founder himself admitted that he noticed their product just got better over time plus the…