Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Are you VC-funded? No, we're profitable

twitter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 43 posts

Re: Are you VC-funded? No, we're profitable

#21

Post by sethaurus »

paxys wrote: post #4

VC-funded startups go out of business. Bootstrapped startups go out of business. While there is a large gap in the two models in terms of finances, operations and everything else, trying to argue that customers should pick your company purely because you haven't raised money shows that you are either deliberately being insincere or know nothing about the industry, neither of which are great selling points. If you wan…

VC-funded startups go out of business because they are unable to grow fast enough.

Bootstrapped startups go out of business because they are not profitable.

As a customer, knowing that a vendor is already profitable and sustainable is a big green light.

Re: Are you VC-funded? No, we're profitable

#22

Post by Aurornis »

jascination wrote: post #5

It's a cute quote, but it seems about 5 years out of date. There was a golden period for a while there that indie hackers and self-funded devs could create a useful product and grow it themselves and could 'beat' VCs. But now you can create some AI generated slop in a day that used to take months. Being an indie hacker used to be a sort of badge of honour, now it's where everyone starts. I think the VC-backed compani…

I followed a lot of indie hackers and “build in public” accounts on Twitter over the years.

Most of them struggled for a while and then pivoted into some variation of being an influencer: Selling courses, selling services to other indie hackers, or just Tweeting trend-following engagement bait 50 times a day and then bragging about the size of their X payout checks.

Everyone talks about the levels.io guy as the epitome of indie hacking, but many don’t realize (or don’t want to admit) that his projects are making that amount of money because of his Twitter following. His current project is a simple vibe-coded game that sells in-game advertising, and the advertisers are paying largely for the novelty and to get in on the conversation. Nothing about that revenue model could be replicated by anyone with such a large Twitter following. Fantastic for him, of course, but it’s so far removed from what people imagine when they talk about being an indie hacker that it’s just not a relevant example of the space. Yet he continues to be held up as an example of what indie hackers can attain.

I think there’s space for individual entrepreneurs, app creators, and business operators. I just don’t see it coming from the self-described “indie hacker” space at this point because indie hacking has turned into a marketing and self-promotion meta game. The real independent devs are operating out of sight at this point.

Re: Are you VC-funded? No, we're profitable

#23

Post by billllll »

tmpz22 wrote: post #18
epolanski wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does it always have to be about maximizing exits at all costs? There's people that simply enjoy their company and working in it, they only luck to sell when they are old and there are no great heirs to the business. And that's true for billion dollar companies too.

Bootstrap = chance of failure, more work because you can't hire a team to do significant amount of work for you VC-funded = Full Salary early, network for future jobs if company fails, shortcuts like joining an incubator and selling to your cohort for early sales figures (which can then be used to get more money)

VC funding is for sure less personal risk, but I don't think the other points are universally true.

1. Re: hiring, you're probably not going to hire your first FTE right after raising money. You're probably going to do so after getting a bit of traction. I hear most investors especially today will push you to be lean and do more yourself. Either way, bootstrap or VC funding, you're going to bust ass, no way around it.

2. Re: salary, yes, some investors will encourage you to pay yourself, but you're probably not paying yourself a "full" salary right away.

3. Re: selling to cohorts is a bit overrated I think. The fact of the matter is, they're probably all early-stage tech startups, which means if you don't have a product that specifically targets early-stage tech startups, you're probably not going to sell to them.

I don't think it's as cut and dried as X is better than Y. It really is all about how much risk you want to take on, if VC funding is even an option.

Re: Are you VC-funded? No, we're profitable

#24

Post by kylecazar »

"Now the same question seems to be coming from a position of customers trying to determine how much of a risk they're willing tolerate when doing business with VC-funded companies."

To be fair, this was one customer's question, not necessarily a trend.

The merits of taking VC are debatable. But I don't think we're at a point where potential customers broadly are skeptical of a funded startup. If nothing else, it means someone, somewhere has vetted you and thinks you can deliver.

Re: Are you VC-funded? No, we're profitable

#25

Post by dehrmann »

light_triad wrote: post #12

It's a bit of a non sequitur: having a profitable business is ideal but if a startup can grow fast with VC money it can be acquired for 40x (Wiz) - 1000x (WhatsApp) revenue even if not profitable

Maybe I'm just saying what VC wants me to say, but if it's the sort of business a VC would invest in, you need to worry about a competitor blitzscaling over you.

Re: Are you VC-funded? No, we're profitable

#27

Post by ipsento606 »

nozzlegear wrote: post #8
jascination wrote: post #5

It's a cute quote, but it seems about 5 years out of date. There was a golden period for a while there that indie hackers and self-funded devs could create a useful product and grow it themselves and could 'beat' VCs. But now you can create some AI generated slop in a day that used to take months. Being an indie hacker used to be a sort of badge of honour, now it's where everyone starts. I think the VC-backed compani…

I tend to be wary of AI slop products as well, but I don't think indie developers are particularly more prone to creating AI slop than VC-backed devs. It seems to me that AI has lowered the barrier to entry for creating slop products for indie devs. On the other end of the spectrum, the number of VC-backed SaaS products out there that haven't completely pivoted to becoming some kind of AI wrapper is approximately zer…

Can you give any examples of "AI slop products"?

Re: Are you VC-funded? No, we're profitable

#28

Post by uhhhhhhh »

plorkyeran wrote: post #19
recursive wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a customer, I might be interested to know if a vendor can continue to exist if they achieve only moderate success.

Yeah, if a non-VC-funded vendor is making a small profit while paying everyone's salaries they're pretty likely to still be around in a few years. A VC funded vendor that's making a small profit but not growing won't be.

This I believe is the root of enshittification.

VC/private equity requires growth levels that are unsustainable and the focus on that destroys the long term prospects of a lot of companies that otherwise would provide great value and support themselves.

So the ones that game marketing for revenue (badly developed or designed features, overselling, etc) win over those that provide real value.

Re: Are you VC-funded? No, we're profitable

#30

Post by pavel_lishin »

light_triad wrote: post #12

It's a bit of a non sequitur: having a profitable business is ideal but if a startup can grow fast with VC money it can be acquired for 40x (Wiz) - 1000x (WhatsApp) revenue even if not profitable

> if a startup can grow fast with VC money it can be acquired for 40x (Wiz) - 1000x (WhatsApp) revenue even if not profitable

How does that help me as a potential user?

Post reply on HN