10 years bootstrapped: €6.5M revenue with a team of 13

> I think you're leaving a lot of money on the table

100% agree. Also, I'm completely fine with it. Money is not the end goal to me.

> you’re adding existential risk to the business with your current strategy.

There's risk in any strategy. The VC playbook of "grow quickly" carries its own dangers: product enshittification, cultural rot, jeopardizing the very thing that made the business work in the first place...

> I’ve noticed over the years that as a general rule some European founders proudly care less about growth than American ones

I don't know if it's a Europe/America cultural difference. Probably, to some extent. We do care a lot about how we spend our lives outside of business. There’s a whole world beyond work that’s worth protecting :)

> If any mid-size company with functional distribution and tech wanted to take your business away, they could.

But why would they? For a "mere" €6.5M/year? We can optimize for the niche that the big players aren't even interested in. Being small and "ignorable" is its own form of defense.

> "in software it's grow or die."

I’m fine with this framing too, honestly. If this business ever runs its course, we have enough runway, experience, and optionality to start something new. There’s no inherent value to me in making a piece of software last for centuries.

What does matter is having a clear and fair exit plan for customers when that moment eventually comes.

> I hope you are writing the 20 year retrospective happily in 10 years from now

We'll see! :) Thanks for a genuinely thoughtful reply — I can tell where you're coming from. These are doubts I've wrestled with for years, and still do. I just keep landing in the same place (for now!).

Businesses have no issue with their suppliers making reasonable margins as long as the value offered is acceptable or better.

I'd rather know a supplier is healthy than scraping by. I just got an email from one of mine saying that they aren't doing great, so please buy as much as possible before the holidays? I'm now making sure I'm not overly dependent on them for anything, which I'd rather not spend time doing if I didn't need to.

it's not hard to make something without funding, even by yourself, as long as you have the time and skill. but problem of the internet of today is saturation. you can have the best service or tool, much better than the number one on the market, but if you have no cash to burn on ads, you won't get anywhere.

i have not read the history of this project but i would consider this as pure luck and nothing more(sadly). nothing wrong with that, but understand that this is a unicorn(not as in 1B company but as someone who was able to make profit).

---

Ah, here it is:

> DatoCMS started in 2015 as an internal tool for our italian web agency.

Yeah, almost every agency used to have its own system back then, before drupal, wordpress and other CMSs were more popular.

It’s a headless CMS. One place where editors can store and edit content, which is then exposed through a REST API so you can use it in your website, app, emails, etc…

Huge companies use it to centralise marketing copy and media.

You're not the only one.