SaaStr

JANUARY 5, 2021

I’m tired of running my (very) successful (VC funded) startup after 5+ years. What’s the brutal truth on raising funds for a startup? How much does a VC partner earn? Is Y Combinator asking too much equity for 120k worth of funding? How much does a VC make? What makes a bad CTO? What should I do?

Software Review 280

Software Review CTO Coach Technical Review Sales Recruiting 280

SaaStr

OCTOBER 22, 2020

We defied all market odds and became one of the fastest growing software companies ever, bootstrapping our way to $20M ARR. And unlike most of today’s startups, we didn’t do it the traditional way: We didn’t raise outside funding; we scraped by and grew organically. How does bootstrap David beat VC-backed Goliath?

Sales Hiring 217

Sales Hiring Scale Engineering Product Marketing 217

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 16, 2022

Bootstrapping. I used to have cuter blog titles. And my question to you is, so what advice do you have for bootstrapped companies that have just under a million in ARR but are having trouble sort of selling their mission, their story to investors? He was like, “Jason, I love your Meet-A-VC program.”

Sales Hiring 213

Sales Hiring VP of Engineering Payment Methods Scale 213

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 18, 2020

How much does a VC partner earn? Are there any examples of a unicorn startup that was bootstrapped? What tells a VC that you are an amateur? I’m tired of running my (very) successful (VC funded) startup after 5+ years. Is Y Combinator asking too much equity for 120k worth of funding? (53k views).

Venture Capital 219

Venture Capital New CTO CTO Startup 219

SaaStr

JANUARY 24, 2021

I think in SaaS, and I learned this from an insight from Josh Stein at DFJ (first VC in Box, SugarCRM, etc.) It’s also a good rule for folks able to bootstrap to scale that are past the point they really need capital per se. If you’ve gotten to say $4m ARR, and are growing quickly … why raise any VC money at all?

Scale 335

Scale Sales Hiring Scaling Construction 335

SaaStr

MAY 5, 2022

Take a look at just some of the topics and mentors hosting Braindates: Lessons Learned to Bootstrapping to $1.7B Fundraising Optimised Cheatsheet: How to Nail Pitching, Save Time, and Navigate the VC Funding Process with KAYA VC’s Ana Wolsztajn. with Maropost’s CEO Ross Andrew Paquette.

Scale 188

Scale Engineering Cloud Pricing 188

SaaStr

JUNE 13, 2020

Here are the Top 10 Most Popular Answers of the past 12 months: #1: “I’m tired of running my (very) successful (VC funded) startup after 5+ years. 7: “How much does a VC partner earn?” 8: “Are there any examples of a unicorn that was bootstrapped?” What’s on everyone’s mind?

Venture Capital 209

Venture Capital CTO Startup 209

SaaStr

AUGUST 5, 2020

Qualified.com , which operates a conversational marketing platform, has raised a $12 million Series A round (the total funding is $17 million since inception). But their two prior ventures were actually bootstrapped. . Then why go the VC route with Qualified.com? Well, it’s essentially a different type of company and market.

compliance 222

compliance B2B Acquisition Cloud 222

SaaStr

MARCH 27, 2023

Capchase’s dataset is comprised of roughly half bootstrapped companies and half VC-backed companies, so there will be some differences in benchmarking from what you see from the VC firms. At the 10 to $15 Million ARR mark, the top quartile company grew at 100% year over year versus 45% for the median.

SaaS Payments 197

SaaS Payments Technical Review Software Review Venture Capital 197

SaaStr

JUNE 17, 2023

In the ever-evolving landscape of SaaS, Venture Capital, Bootstrapping, and Valuations – understanding market trends and investment patterns is critical. With market downturns and reduced venture capital funding, some businesses struggle to stay afloat. However, others seem to remain unimpacted by these changes.

Venture Capital 205

Venture Capital Scale Technical Review Software Review 205

Baremetrics

AUGUST 23, 2021

When it was first coined, “bootstrapping” described the impossible task of “pulling yourself up by your bootstraps”. Now, we use bootstrapping to describe the not quite impossible task of building your business without financing. When you are bootstrapping your company, you need to keep a keen eye on your cash flow.

Business 96

Business Payment Services SaaS Payments Payment Solutions 96

OPEXEngine

JANUARY 28, 2020

Similar to a venture capitalist (VC), I try to understand where startups are in their life cycles — and where they can expect to go. Recently, several VCs have asked for my perspective on how — and whether — RBF, term loans and lines of credit fit into the funding life cycles of VC-backed startups.

Venture Capital 61

Venture Capital Finance Payments Revenue 61

Baremetrics

MAY 14, 2020

Canny is a bootstrapped, remote-working, profitable team of seven. I’d like to emphasize that being bootstrapped doesn’t mean that we’re building a “lifestyle business.” If you want to bootstrap a company, making money is crucial. After launch, we started writing blog posts. Telling our story on the Canny blog.

Sales Recruiting 90

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Branding Business Model 90

SaaSX

SEPTEMBER 30, 2019

Originally stemming from the concept of “pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps”, the term “bootstrapping” describes a self-funded approach to starting a company. Bootstrapped companies are companies which are financed and grown internally, without the need for capital investment or other external assistance.

SaaS 45

SaaS Startup Finance Investment 45

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 11, 2022

Jason Lemkin: I’ll tell you the loser-est thing as a founder, you can say to a VC and make you sound like a loser… And I literally never used the word loser, right? So don’t look like a fundraising VC loser and don’t let them see you sweat, and share the trade-offs in a good way. And so you got to quit.

Outsourcing Services 178

Outsourcing Services Banking CTO Hire New CTO 178

Chart Mogul

MARCH 24, 2020

Contrary to what both proponents of bootstrapping and raising capital want you to believe, choosing between the two sides of the debate is not just a matter of personal preference. There’s been quite a bit of debate on Twitter recently about bootstrapping vs VC funding. They raise a $400 million fund.

Payment Methods 52

Payment Methods Venture Capital SaaS Payments Sales Hiring 52

Chart Mogul

MARCH 24, 2020

Contrary to what both proponents of bootstrapping and raising capital want you to believe, choosing between the two sides of the debate is not just a matter of personal preference. There’s been quite a bit of debate on Twitter recently about bootstrapping vs VC funding. They raise a $400 million fund.

Payment Methods 52

Payment Methods Venture Capital SaaS Payments Sales Hiring 52

SaaStr

MAY 10, 2021

I am fairly confident there are at least 1,000 Substacks, 10,000 Medium posts, 20,000 WordPress articles, and over well over 1,000,000 Tweets on How to Get Funded. Raising money for non-bootstrapped CEOs is one of their top 5 priorities. Ok you say, but how can I possibly make a VC want to fund me before I even meet her or him?

Venture Capital 280

Venture Capital Investment Metrics Startup 280

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 25, 2021

His company was bootstrapped and an industry leader, but it wasn’t growing that quickly. Vista even just raised a new $10 billion fund to keep buying them. But if you’ve raised less than say $10m in VC capital, you become very attractive. Versus some VC firms may be just fine with that. There are many.

Venture Capital 331

Venture Capital SaaS Startup Pricing 331

SaaStr

JULY 28, 2021

Bootstrapped because nobody in their right mind would have actually invested in us back then and took it up until 2014 as a bootstrapped company. Bootstrapped it and then in October of 2016, we actually did an IPO which was interesting and fun and cool, but it’s a lot of work, too. I got bored and started BlackLine.

Startup 269

Startup CTO Hire Sales Hiring CTO Coach 269

SaaStr

AUGUST 26, 2022

I’ll give you maybe a little bit…I went to maybe half the VC sessions. Jason Lemkin: The highest stage of venture is crossover, crossover funds, TCV is one of an early one, but even mutual funds that invest in unicorns. Jason Lemkin: Crossover funds can go where it’s greener. Jason Lemkin: The crisis?

Sales Hiring 195

Sales Hiring Scale Sales Recruiting Scaling 195

Chart Mogul

APRIL 3, 2018

Venture capitalists are discussing the growing divide between SaaS and VC funding, with the potential for huge returns associated with VC becoming increasingly rare. See The Rise of Non “VC compatible” SaaS Companies.). Blog content. But the list of elements that influence branding is huge: Company logo.

Branding 97

Branding B2B Investment User Experience 97

SaaStr

OCTOBER 22, 2020

Prior to their incredibly successful IPO in April of 2017, they raised funding from some of the best in the business including Sequoia, a16z, Greylock, Khosla and Floodgate to name a few. Before Okta, Ryan was the Co-Founder and CEO @ Sproost, a bootstrapped online expert recommendation system.

Sales Hiring 166

Sales Hiring Scale Interviewing Technical Review 166

Baremetrics

NOVEMBER 10, 2019

The cash impact of annual prepayments can be particularly challenging to forecast, even though prepayments can be critical in funding the growth in bootstrapped or fundstrapped companies. . If you still have questions, I have a more comprehensive post coming up in Flightpath’s blog on how to forecast cash from annual plans in SaaS.

Deferred Revenue 111

Deferred Revenue SaaS Payments Sales Hiring Payment Services 111

SaaStr

OCTOBER 24, 2019

Notion Capital was really the first fund to have the guts to invest in Tradeshift. He wrote about Box will be a billion dollar company in tech funds and everybody was just laughing at him and saying, “But God no SaaS, B@B boring software company is ever going to be a billion dollars.” We were pretty crazy even then.

Payments 102

Payments Payment Features SaaS Payments Underperforming Technical Team 102

SaaSOptics

AUGUST 16, 2018

Maybe they’re bootstrapping and have no interest in venture capital. Ari is a partner of Techstars on the ventures team and has been a VC for about five years and has more than a decade of experience as an entrepreneur. You’re out there in a super competitive market, and you have to earn the right to attain that funding.

SaaS 40

SaaS Scale Sales Hiring Venture Capital 40

SaaSOptics

AUGUST 16, 2018

Maybe they’re bootstrapping and have no interest in venture capital. Ari is a partner of Techstars on the ventures team and has been a VC for about five years and has more than a decade of experience as an entrepreneur. You’re out there in a super competitive market, and you have to earn the right to attain that funding.

SaaS 40

SaaS Scale Sales Hiring Venture Capital 40

SaaSOptics

AUGUST 16, 2018

Maybe they’re bootstrapping and have no interest in venture capital. Ari is a partner of Techstars on the ventures team and has been a VC for about five years and has more than a decade of experience as an entrepreneur. You’re out there in a super competitive market, and you have to earn the right to attain that funding.

SaaS 40

SaaS Scale Sales Hiring Venture Capital 40

SaaStr

AUGUST 15, 2019

After finding funding and product/market fit, your next steps as a founder in the hypergrowth phase can determine the future of your company. You’re listening to the 20 Minute VC with your host, Harry Stebbings, the official SaaStr podcast with me, Harry Stebbings. The startup journey moves in waves—whether you’re ready or not.

Scale 100

Scale Payment Methods Scaling SaaS Payments 100

SaaStr

AUGUST 15, 2019

After finding funding and product/market fit, your next steps as a founder in the hypergrowth phase can determine the future of your company. You’re listening to the 20 Minute VC with your host, Harry Stebbings, the official SaaStr podcast with me, Harry Stebbings. The startup journey moves in waves—whether you’re ready or not.

Scale 100

Scale Payment Methods Scaling SaaS Payments 100

OnStartups

JULY 7, 2021

And so my question to you is what, whether you did it or you just considered it, what's a sort of outlandish use of funds that you've either considered or done? And I published this on my own startups blog. It was self-funded, bootstrapped. This is how startup entrepreneurship works up here if you're self-funded.

Payment Methods 140

Payment Methods Software Review Technical Review Payment Solutions 140

OnStartups

JULY 7, 2021

And so my question to you is what, whether you did it or you just considered it, what's a sort of outlandish use of funds that you've either considered or done? And I published this on my own startups blog. It was self-funded, bootstrapped. This is how startup entrepreneurship works up here if you're self-funded.

Payment Methods 40

Payment Methods Software Review Technical Review Payment Solutions 40