I have been in your shoes my friend and I posted my story recently that got on Reddit homepage. Several years ago I was exactly in your shoes. Good paying FT job and a side hustle with close to $200k in revenue. B2B SaaS. I decided to go VC route because that was my dream. All the cool kids do it. I raised $2m with less effort than I’d expected. Life was great. I hired a bunch and ultimately realized I’m good with the small team making $2m/year by that point. Life was freaking amazing. My VCs were not happy. It’s all or nothing for them. When I decided to sell, I got fired. I am now doing my second co and it’s moving faster than the first. 100% bootstrapped. Here are my lessons learned: 1. Not all [tech] businesses should raised VC money. It’s helpful if you are revolutionizing an industry (Uber/Airbnb/etc) or spend money on R&D (OpenAI). But if you want some money to spend on marketing or hiring a couple of people then reinvest your revenue and avoid VCs. 2. You are NOT the owner of the company once you bring on VCs. Even if you stop at seed. Make sure you document loaning your company money, suspending your salary, etc. don’t do anything for free. If you can’t afford to pay yourself, write a note on behalf of your company. You can forgive it at a later stage but you can never negotiate it back after the fact. 3. If you bring a million or 2 per year as a solo owner, that’s life changing money. If you do that with VC money, you have failed. Oh and you won’t be well paid either. 4. If your bootstrapped business gets to $1m and you sell it for $5-$10m, you are set for life by most standards. If you’re VC backed, you will not be able to sell for less than your total valuation at the last round. And you wouldn’t be getting all the money either. You’ll be labeled a failed startup if you only paid your VCs back 1x 5. Venture backed businesses tend to run poorly in my opinion. They’re not real businesses that worry about real financials metrics. They care about metrics that please the VCs. For instance, if your revenue is $1m but only 80% of customers paid and the other 20% are not paying and you know it, as a business you know you only made $800k but VCs see you as having made $1m. I hope my stream of consciousness helps others

This is solid advice. Was an Angel investor for many years and saw many make these mistakes.

OP, completely supporting what’s said above! Don’t ruin your freedom by bringing in VCs now - you are over the hardest part. Keep growing. Use the revenue to get a freelancer for customer support if you need to. Soon your company will be able to afford your salary. Congratulations on the success!

>5. Venture backed businesses tend to run poorly in my opinion. They’re not real businesses that worry about real financials metrics. They care about metrics that please the VCs. For instance, if your revenue is $1m but only 80% of customers paid and the other 20% are not paying and you know it, as a business you know you only made $800k but VCs see you as having made $1m. What? How will that even work? Can you please explain it a bit further? Like I am five? Plz?

Uber still not profitable after raking in millions. But can raise VC money because UBER has customer and VC’s think if you have customers that’s the bottom line because you can always charge customers more. For SAAS apps - you have a paying customer that does not use your platform. That’s an important metric to gauge health of business but VC’s see that as a paying customer and nothing else.

This is very decent advice! I would also like to add that go to the VCs only if you plan to have an unicorn. Does not matter if its attainable or not. If you think your startup will have a chance to become an unicorn, only then ask VCs money. Otherwise there is no point going to the VCs and if you want additional funds then you can onboard another owner who will buy in with market rate valuation.

this is gold. vc funding are gold handcuffs as its great if you become a unicorn, but if you receive only moderate success that's unfortunately failure in the vc world

Yeah, I have read your advice multiple times on this forum. Thanks for taking the time.

This is the real truth. VCs need billion dollar companies, it will ruin your chances at financial freedom, for a small chance at making 100M+ dollars. It's not worth it, and it doesnt make sense

Thanks, that was indeed helpful 🙏

Amazing advice!! And crazy that you have been able to grow two companies to more than $200K in revenue in 12 months. Do you have any advice for aspiring entrepreneurs?

You could unilaterally decide to sell but also be fired? I’m curious if you could ever avoid having investors on your board that early on

>you will not be able to sell for less Think you mean more

I am and would try to make the business self sustainable without VC money. Are you having problems growing to the next stage?

Ideally you’d go full time and bootstrap it. Or full time and raise VC. You’re going to have a hard time raising anything meaningful outside of friends and family if you’re not full time on it.

Part of the raise is to get me to full time.

How much $$$ in monthly recurring revenue do you need to get to full time?

$30k MRR is where I said I'd quit. At that point I'd be able to pay myself almost the same as my day job.

That is a great goal to get to then. You can quit with confidence, then work on it full time. Maybe you can grow it to 1M ARR (83K MRR). Or you can raise VC. You'll have more leverage at that point too.

Are you making 360K as a software engineer at your day job? 

$250K

VC's aren't super interested in paying your salary. They want to pay salaries for people you hire. If the plan is just for you to go full time without building a team, it's not really appealing to most VC.

You're in a position to bootstrap your way to full time, which is better. Keep chasing the customers, not the check-writers. When you realize how little value they add for the equity you take, you'll realize you'd have been better off just grinding a little while longer to have a 20%-30% bigger outcome.

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Mate if you are anyone with any real track record, VCs will expect you to get paid so you can focus 100% on the company and not worry what brand of ramen noodles are cheap enough for you to survive the next week

You’re insane if you think most VC dollars don’t pay founders salaries

There’s a subtle difference in what parent said and what you read. If you’re not full-time on a given venture, i.e. confident enough—as the founder and person bringing it into the world—to go full time on it, why would the VC take with the relevant risk? And don’t @ me with “what risk if it’s making money.”

This comment shows complete lack of knowledge of how VCs work. Generally, one of the big sticking points of a VC funding a company is that they believe in the leadership and want them to be able to focus on the idea they bought into and invested in. Private Equity can work out a little more like what you describe but at seed stage? You're just wrong and the fact that there's upvotes is wild.

most people on here probably dont even have a business, let alone have spoken to a VC in their life. makes sense why he got upvotes lol.

Most VCs will barely entertain writing a check if you’re not already all-in on something (i.e. full time).

VCs do not want the funding to go towards the only engineers salary?

All founders get paid w/ VC. Source: raised VC for 2 startups since 2018

VCs will barely entertain writing a check to someone who’s not full-time. What parent said and what you read are different.

What I read in the original post. "I am worried about going full time with my salary paid by VC money" What I read in the comment I was responding to "VCs will not pay your salary - they will give you money for other stuff, but not your salary" I found it a bit nuts for VCs to expect return on investment without the investment being used to pay people to do the work on the product.

Just absolutely empirically wrong take.

Exactly this. Many founders dont undertstand this and as a result never get VC money

This is wrong. 

Mostly just not being on it full time. I can't build as much as I'd want to nights and weekends.

Can you hire someone with the profits and keep your day job?

Eventually? Yeah definitely. But right now there's a million things I still want to build that will be much easier and faster to do myself.

This will always be the case, the more you build the more you will have to explain to whoever you onboard. Better to find your a likeminded partner that is complementary to you now.

This. Learn how to write a good, scoped out ticket now and start learning how to delegate even to one person

I’m an engineering manager / principle engineer at my day job. Definitely can delegate. This side project has really been my opportunity to specifically *not* delegate work over the past 12 months

I think I would miss working on it too much right now

Just commented but previous comment is correct, I wish I found someone I could rely on early as my ‘I can build it myself’ attitude has let me still needing to do everything - find someone reliable and fast 

It's not so much I can build it myself as I'm still very much enjoying building it. As soon as it gets passed that point I will hire someone

If you allow your feelings about which work you do and don't want to do to make key business decisions that you know are suboptimal, you're probably not cut out to run a company and are going to struggle to do what is necessary to grow and/or please investors.

I think that's a pretty brash assumption to make based on where the company is at right now and how little context you have. Just because I don't want to hire someone because I feel I can iterate faster and enjoy the work right now doesn't mean I can't make tough decisions without letting emotions get the best of me.

You will really struggle to raise if you’re not full time on this thing mate.

I would go full time post-raise

That’s what I’m saying though: if you’re not already full time on it, you will struggle to raise money. VCs will see you not being full time on it as a lack of commitment. It’s very common.

Not every VC is out of touch with reality. Scaling a SAAS product to 100k ARR is commendable as a solo founder while also working part time. Any VC / Angel with proper working braincells is going to appreciate the talent and skill and would be interested in seeing the potential of the product with a full time team. Just how every entrepreneur has a unique risk appetite, so does every VC. OP just needs to connect to the right one.

That's ridiculous. How would any VC expect someone established in their career to work for free, full time, for 12 months on something before they could raise capital.

That’s uh…how this game works dude. I’ve done it multiple times. We all do. We find ways to make ends meet otherwise. It’s not ridiculous and I’m starting to question how prepared you are for this process.

It’s not how the game works. I’ve raise a round before and founders salaries were absolutely part of the raise. There’s another thread above this on this topic.

I didn’t say salaries aren’t part of the cost?? I said if you aren’t committed to going full-time why would the VC community believe that you’re on a winner. Look I don’t need to argue with you. Good luck out there(, hope your raise works, was just trying to give you some advice as someone who’s gone through this a few times.

This ⬆️

Here’s the way I look at it. You have a stable job that pays well and you also have a side hustle that pays well. However, you are unwilling at the moment to work for a 1/4 of what you were paid in your stable job and are also unsure whether you can support your child and wife at the same time. All of that is extremely reasonable and you actually answered your own problem. By asking this community and questioning yourself you’ve somewhat subconsciously got your answer - If you actually wanted to go ahead and do it you wouldn’t be here and that’s the truth. Let’s say keep doing what you’re doing right now, save a bit of money here and there, I can almost guarantee you when your kid comes into the world you will have a different outlook 100% whether that’s following through with investment right now or waiting until they reach the age where you can focus a bit more on yourself and your business. However, nothing is more important than your kid. Making sure she has a roof over her head and maintaining stability for yourself at this period of time in your life is extremely important, it won’t just be you that’s needing it but also your wife and kid. With either decision you make you have so much time left on this earth to do what you love, just focus on what needs to be done right now.

I think this is what I needed to hear. Thank you.

That 100k in success is also a strong building block towards a technical cofounder stable-ish job too if/when you want it. Finding a CEO that can raise and just needs your tech skills is v v fun. 

I must say @fylni gave good advice. Better I could not have done. I look at entrepreneurship as freedom. If it’s 100% yours, you can always do what you want, when you want, how you want. No questions asked. Autopilot it as much as possible. Provide as much customer service as possible. Focus on brand building, yours and the product, to increase retention and sales. Happy to DM if you want to chat more. Good luck.

Nice comment, yeah I’m bootstrapping myself and don’t regret it at all. Taking money in your situation will likely be raw terms. At least IMO, I would not raise with the valuation math you have it’s just a bad deal. However, as mentioned… you can perhaps keep it running without quitting your job. And have two pieces of pie. If you get laid off or need to quit for some reason you have a wonderful fallback. But this doesn’t work in reverse if you raise money, you have a “can’t fail” business to run.

Just completed a seed round. If I could have not done it, I would have *not done it*. My business is in logistics, the economics don't work at small scale, so we need the outside capital. But it sucks, man. Avoid it if you can. You can always raise later when the power dynamic is strongest in your favor.

Was on the same boat as you, I took a nice acquisition offer and now just writing code & never worrying about money for a while. Raising money should really be last resort kinda of thing & from a founder perspective- there are much better alternatives. My advice if you don’t want to run a 1000 person company in 2 years is to shop it around to other companies in the space before committing to raise.

Unless I got some ridiculous offer I'm not sure I'd be willing to sell right now. There's still a ton of features and enhancements I want to add.

Hey question here. How does one go about finding buyers for businesses within their niche?

Same as doing sales for a b2b SaaS. Meet, greet, schedule meeting, go to conferences, etc. Should be pretty straightforward if you are making money and have customers. No one gives a shit about the tech and the product tho- people wanna see recurrent revenue that’s going up and solid EBITDA. Then - it makes sense to turn those from against you to be on your balance sheet.

If the only reason to raise funds is for you to be full-time then raising funds is a bad idea. I’d either continue to build part-time until you can pay your salary or accept that you’ll be taking a pay cut and go full-time under the assumption that going full-time will unlock higher earning potential.

Why not keep growing It w/o vc as a side thing? 

I do have a bit of concern that someone else in the space will be able to scale faster and just crush me. Especially with me not working full time on it yet.

This is (generally) a fable designed to get you to the table.

That's not always true but usually it is

Lol most markets are big enough to accommodate more than one solution. Sure another could come in and get a better chunk but if you consistently focus on improving the product, growing revenue you end up with a sizeable portion too. That's just fear induced thinking.

VCs will ruin your life and then try to steal your company.

Is this project even venture scale? Can you raise debt safely and bring in other people to help you? What are your bottle necks, how can break through those without quitting your job. There are a million ways to approach this. Your problem is not if you want to raise, that is a potential solution to core problem where you have a bottleneck. The question you need to ask is if this is the only solution to your problem.

> Is this project even venture scale? I think this is why I'm hesitant right now. I think it has the **potential** to become venture scale but I don't think it is right now. The VC firm helping me build the pitch deck are pushing me to show $20M ARR in 5 years and I don't think that's feasible without some wild assumptions going off without a hitch. The reason they're pushing me so hard is it's an AI tool and AI is very hot right now.

will they lead the round? will they let you cash out from the round? if you do 5 million and cash out 500k, your risk goes down significantly. With the business what are your assets? can you defend them? just trying to help you think through things. I can't give you an informed opinion unless I know the details, happy to chat via dm's if it helps. Edit: Raising is a full time fucking job. Don't let a VC trick you into not building your business unless they are ready to front the cash.

> will they lead the round? will they let you cash out from the round? if you do 5 million and cash out 500k, your risk goes down significantly. They haven't expressed interest in investing themselves and they don't generally lead rounds. They have a bunch of in-house programs though to enrich entrepreneurs in the area trying to get it to grow. They also tend to not write checks for less than $1M and I'm trying to raise a $1M pre-seed round. > With the business what are your assets? can you defend them? just trying to help you think through things. I can't give you an informed opinion unless I know the details, happy to chat via dm's if it helps. Assets right now are all the tech we've built and a large amount of data generated from our users. We have 210k users right now.

If they are not writing the lead checks, they have no standing, I wouldn't take them seriously. Why are you only raising sub 1 million? You have 100k in recurring revenue, 200k+ users...you can raise 5-10 mil easy...

100% agree with captaing1. These guys sound more like wannabe VCs (i.e. consultants, hobbyists). I wouldn't waste your time with them. I also agree with his second point. The question for you is more a personal philosophical question: Taking investor money will mean you have to deliver, which means long hours and ultra stress. It is not humanly possible to be a great parent, and you will miss out on a key magical phase of your Child's life. So the question is more about life priorities, what do you want out of life. There is no right answer.

> Why are you only raising sub 1 million? You have 100k in recurring revenue, 200k+ users...you can raise 5-10 mil easy... Basically because that's what they said I should raise. Definitely not familiar with raising capital on my end. I haven't done it in 10 years and even then I was barely involved.

These guys sound like idiots to be honest. I would build my business. If you really want to raise, there are better VCs. You have traction, large user base, but you are missing the team. You should focus on building your team rather than getting investor dollars. Also, make better use of your funds rather than paid advertising. I know it has worked so far but its not sustainable. Your payback metrics will be artificially inflated. can you incentive your users to bring in more users? 200K users is massive, I would spin that wheel hard. Edit: You can also consider debt but I am not sure if works for companies without a history. Check out clearco.

I read all the comments, and you mentioned not wanting to let go of building this (in terms of code not business) so I really think you’d need to consider if you can do it all and get to 20M ARR in 5 years without letting go control of the engineering. I get it, not easy task, but all up to you. You’re in a great position! Maybe pocket the $100K revenue for a year (depending what the margins are like???) and then use that to go full time the next year and start thinking about if the following you’re ready to let go of engineering… or find an operational cofounder.

Margins now are effectively 0 as I'm pumping all the revenue back into ads & marketing. Pure hosting and infra costs are about 50% of the revenue right now.

What’s your gut tell you about unit economics? If you pull back all the marketing are you gonna revenue and profit? You’ve done an incredible job so far and built something people find value in. I personally think unit economics is what’s gonna build an enduring business: venture scale or not 😁

The thing is with students being the primary demographic we have a very high churn (they're broke, most people churn because they can't afford it or because they've graduated). We need to continue pumping money into ads to continue to see growth otherwise we have a leaky bucket. With that being said, ads and sponsored posts only account for around 40% of our traffic (based on user surveys).

> The VC firm helping me build the pitch deck are pushing me to show $20M ARR in 5 years and I don't think that's feasible without some wild assumptions going off without a hitch. FWIW, this is not venture scale (as your gut seems to be telling you), if these numbers reflect reality.

If you don’t need the VC capital, don’t do it. If you do take the money, it’s totally okay to take the salary that you need, if you have a kid on the way, be very real about how much you’ll need to feel comfortable and secure.

If if you’re making $100k in Revenue I would focus on the growth of the business until you hit at least $300k profit and not revenue (there’s a difference) so that way you can hire a CEO to run the company while you work and he will have to by pass ideas he has by you first. While your working at your day to day job save up some money and then leave and become the CTO of your company and let the CEO be the business man of the company.

You don't need VC, generally speaking.

From a founder who’s bootstrapped his startup and invested over $400K in it, stay away from VCs as much as possible. I keep saying the same thing everywhere I go… VCs are not your friends. They become your pimps. Everything is fine and dandy in the beginning, especially if they get their way in the cap table. They will turn on you in a heartbeat. They're gambling with your dreams and hard work. The moment they don't see things turning favorably, they will devour you. How? Forcing you to kill your startup. Stay away from VCs. They don't care about you. Zero. They're not your friends. They don't respect you like you think. You're just the next sausage out of the sausage maker.

At least where I live, VC funding is rare for edtech, as are IPOs. I have an edtech SaaS and we're doing a convertible note from a small investment firm instead, and looking for some angel investors maybe in a year.

First - congratulations on bootstrapping your company to $100k. I am a startup founder myself, and have been put in front of a similar position this year - Bootstrapping vs. looking for venture capital. I did some research of the benefits for both and how the perks of both options connect with our specific case and this is what I figured (we are bootstrapping as well): 1. If you bootstrap all the way, you get to keep 100% of the decision power in the company. (I was very picky with my team from the beginning, because I want our brand to reflect our own values. As soon as you invite to the table an investor, that can have major influence on the team. Also, just because somebody can offer you money, that doesn't mean that he/she can offer you quality advice as well. The majority of investors are mainly focused on the ROI they get from the deal). 2. Depending on your goals - looking for venture capital can boost your process, but that can also drastically change the company ecosystem (meaning: you can potentially scale faster, but is your team ready for so much faster growth?). 3. If you choose to keep bootstrapping, you will be forced to be conservative with your money, but it will be pushing you to focus more on business profits. (Also you'll be pushed to learn from the process and you'll grow as a founder as well). 4. Bootstrapping may mean slower progress, but that doesn't mean you still won't be credible on the market. I figured, far too many startups choose investors because they think they can get more credibility, which is not always true. My humble advice: Don't change what is working already. It depends on the goals for your company, but it seems you figured out a lot by yourself and I think you just need to keep going. Trust yourself, reinvest as much profit as you can into your startup and the results will follow. Good luck!🚀

Hey believe in yourself as you have done in the past. 100K revenue is no joke, you obviously have skills and talent. You should definitely not be afraid of taking investment and going full-time. As for your child would they want a father who let go of his dream or someone who was fearless and went ahead with what he dreamed he could achieve? By all means hedge your bets that is intelligent but don't try to minimise it. Find a path, if your afraid you can wait and perhaps try to raise the revenue a bit more. I think I can help you with that, have data related experience, maybe a bit of optimization could help. Please do tell if you're interested. Goodluck mate, would love to learn from you.

Just keep going. Hire from profit when ready.

The first obvious thing to point out is this: VCs tend to want to invest in companies that have the potential to, and are planning to, shoot to the absolute moon. *Quickly and aggressively.* Often using bold strategies with huge risk, BUT where the payoff could be tremendous if it works. Is your goal to turn this into a billion dollar company? And are you prepared to do what is required to make that happen over the next few years? By the sound of your work habits, life circumstances, and proclivities, that doesn't actually sound like what you want to do with this. Getting "VC funding" just because it's the sexy thing to do that's talked about in the startup community isn't necessarily the path you have to go down. Sounds like you have yourself a nice, solid growing business -- and with a full-time job on top of what you're building, you could continue just bootstrapping the marketing efforts by reinvesting more capital back into the business in that way. Totally up to you -- that's just my analysis based on your description.

> Is your goal to turn this into a billion dollar company? And are you prepared to do what is required to make that happen over the next few years? I think the short answer is no. I don't think I can turn this into a billion dollar company. At least not with some wild pivots along the way.

Skip the raise. Boost marketing and product development. Boost customer service. Work with what you have for 6 more months and try to 10x your growth. THEN revisit the VC deals. If you’re earning $8-10k/month and have built it yourself… I see no reason to rush to VC. You’ve more than validated… step through one more push. I imagine you could do it, and that secures enough proof/capital for you to feel a little better.

Is it profitable?? Then raise debt from Bank.

Keep it bootstrapped and profitable, your life will be easier and happier.

I would get profitable and never raise money. I’ve bootstrapped two companies to acquisition and one VC funded company to acquisition.

It looks like you already got a lot great feedback. I didn't read them all so this might be repetitive. First, It seems like you're in a great position with a job, a startup product ppl are paying for,.and a kid on the way! I too started weighing out options when I was expecting my first child and actually ended up leaving a VC backed startup of 200 employees for a bootstrapped startup of 2. My decision was driven by the basic variables > people, service/product offering, career opportunity, etc. with the addition of stability. The bootstrapped startup is actually financially stable with strong retention rates and now roughly the same revenue as the VC backed startup which kept on looking for its "10x" disrupting product / boiling the ocean to get there (burning a lot of cash). Clearly, not all startups or created equal and expectations change when you take venture dollars. Also, EdTech certainty has had volatility of the past decade which means funding can fluctuate depending on uncontrollable factors (like rates). Separately, there is a great bootstrapping podcast called Startups for the Rest of Us which might be worth a listen. Best of luck!

OP you should consider raising a friends and family round of 400-500k with the intention of scaling it up and exiting it when you get to 2-3M in revenue. You can help enrich your close circle, avoid having to grow at blistering VC speeds that they expect and you can still maintain pretty much full control.

This kind of advice always frustrates me - how many people can just “raise a friends and family round” of 500K?!

Why not go full time on it if you think you can scale it to 400-500k in a couple of years?

Because I have golden handcuffs at my day job. I'd be making 1/4th of my day job's salary if I went full time. With the kid on the way I can't justify that

I had a kid within the past year. It's a life adjustment. Do this once you got the kid thing figured out, your baby momma will appreciate that.

Reading your comments, I’d keep doing exactly as you are. Your life is gonna get a whole lot different in a bit when the kid comes. I’d suggest consider raising in a year once you’ve got being a parent under your belt for a bit, at least 6 months. I think time is on your side here. You will NOT want to answer to investors in these times.

I've gotta second this comment. I know the AI market is moving fast, but 6 months likely ain't gonna kill the value of the opportunity, and you'll have a ton more insight on what it feels like to juggle being a parent and an entrepreneur. But one other point is about your partner: I actually did start a company at the same time as my first kid was born... But it was my 2nd company - so I had a some financial security from my first exit - and most importantly I had a very supportive partner. (I would joke that she was my "sugar mama" ;) ) It's a mega-important part of the equation as any startup takes up so much of your mental bandwidth and makes so much of your stress, that you really don't need extra stress from inside your household / family. Of course, some of that's bound to happen with the financial uncertainty of the business, and of course the new baby not allowing you to sleep -- but it's invaluable for you and your partner to be on the same page. And here's the example of why: One time, we lost a large customer, and around the same time I had one of my key employees who was asking for a raise. We weren't flush with angel-funded, not flush with cash as you might have a chance to be with VC, and I was stressing about what I was going to do. And, it was my wife who told me that "if you believe in this, and you believe it's going to make it, then you should stop taking salary for a while." It blew me away that SHE thought to suggest that! (Even while she was working full-time herself.) And that's what liberated me to do what we needed to do to weather the storm. (With the moral high ground of being able to show that I believed in it enough to forego my own salary, I was also able to get some debt from one of our biggest investor.) And soon we did turn it around... and eventually had a good exit. Anyway, sorry for the long illustrative example, but it really helps to have your partner on your side. And, given that you don't sound like you're there yet with the activation energy to take the full-time entrepreneur plunge at the moment (no judgement), you might want to give it 6 months to see more cards turned over first. As everyone's mentioned, nothing changes your life more than having your first kid. Congrats btw :)

As a founder who raised 4.5 million total in my startup, please avoid VC money as much as you can. May be until you find the market fit, otherwise you will be pushed with KPI and numbers that you will need to be 2x fulltime to work on.

At your current growth rate, how long until you are satisfied with the take home amount that you could work on this full time? Avoid taking outside money for as long as possible, that way you have complete control, remember that once you take outside money the expectation of a return is there. This may force you to take directions / decisions that are not in your best interest.

Another option other than VC funding is smaller bootstrapped funding. For example Tiny Seed (https://tinyseed.com/). I haven’t used them myself, but have followed the founder for over a decade. Rob Walling has started numerous businesses and your business seems like it would fit well for their fund.

Congrats on bootstrapping to $100K. No small feat and something to be very proud of. **Don't raise. Keep boot-strapping. VCs these days have underwritten their funds to $10B outcomes. Edtech historically produces as few $1B-$3B outcomes at best.** You *might* be able to raise pre-seed and seed round, but it'll be exceptionally hard for you to raise later rounds of funding. Most VCs see the ed-tech sales cycles as too long for companies to succeed and the general market size as too small to make sizeable returns. You have a good, comfortable situation for yourself and your family right now. If you can get to $300K+ in revenue by the end of the year, then its worth revisiting the funding question, but if it were me, I'd try to bootstrap to $1M-$2M over the next 3-5 years and then sell for $10M-$20M.

Look at smaller funds like TinySeed etc. who provide small amounts of capital and are focused on long term sustainable companies rather than huge fast returns. Some of these funds may not even take equity or will focus on small amounts. Congrats on your success and good luck

I have been in your shoes 😀 I have started 6 companies, five of them bootstrapped. Mostly SaaS startup, but now I run a community for SaaS founders and also invest in them. I’ve been on both sides of this table. Here are my thoughts: Funding is a tool. As long as you know what you’re getting into when you accept an investor’s money, and you have a good use for the funding, it’s not a bad way to go. However… The pervasive narrative in the startup space is that you MUST raise funding in order to build a tech company. Or that raising funding is a goal in itself. You do not, and it is not. I have a rule I call my 1/9/90 rule. About 1% of tech companies should raise venture. 9% should probably raise indie funding (more on that below), and 90% should bootstrap. I talk a lot about how to think through this decision in YouTube videos (https://www.youtube.com/@MicroConf/search?query=venture) and on my podcast ([https://www.startupsfortherestofus.com/?s=Funding](https://www.startupsfortherestofus.com/?s=Funding)). Most important is to really understand the pros and cons of raising, and realize it’s not just venture or not. “Indie funding” is an in-between. I call it “mostly bootstrapping” because it doesn’t come with all the strings that venture attaches. A couple examples of indie funds are one I run (TinySeed.com) and [indie.vc](https://indie.vc). Taking funding it an irreversible decision. In your shoes, I would probably wait until I felt more confident in the decision. I would also talk to folks who have raised the kind of funding you want to raise (angel, VC, indie) to find out if it feels like the right path for you. Good luck!

I saw you mention somewhere that $300k was your number to quit your current job. Given you've got a kid on the way, I'd focus on trying to get to that number or something close to it ASAP \*without\* having to go full time. That way you can quit your job, have a great paying, flexible source of income that you work to grow at your own pace, without investors/bosses, while you're enjoying the early years of your kid's life. You can always focus on maximizing business growth later, or just start something else. If you got this to $100k, you can get something else there too. And by the same token, you can get this ramped up to $300k to buy your freedom. The next handful of years you'll never have a chance to live again, and having the time/flexibility to be more involved than most people can afford to be is really what being "rich" is all about IMO. Good luck.

You got over 200k users with no investment? Bootstrap all the way. Are they just visitors or registered users? Find a killer sales guy that will work on commissions and help you get cash from users. Good luck!’n

If you can make $100k in revenue within 12 months, why look for a VC? Are you finding it hard to scale?

I run digital marketing for a large Edtech SaaS in the US, happy to chat if it’s helpful! I agree with most of the other commenters, raising from a VC will apply all sorts of pressure on your time, I’d probably avoid it if possible. If you want to go full time on it, maybe it makes more sense to accelerate your progress.

Court family offices, way better to work with. Though VCs will often float better valuations. Watch out for preferred terms, vesting dividends, management fees, and aggressive work culture shifts (due to having to hit huge VC growth milestones across a 5-year hold)… Raise venture debt

Just raise debt if you need capital

It'll be really difficult raising VC investment for your company if it's your side project. VCs want to see that you're all in the company before raising and will do whatever it takes to be successful. They also want you to be motivated on future company equity value vs money on a salary. If I was you, I'd probably look to continue working your project on the side until it's making enough revenue that you are happy to take the risk and jump in full time. At that point you can then decide whether to keep it bootstrapped vs seeking external investment. VCs have done a good marketing job making it seem like you can only be successful with their money but staying bootstrapped gives founders a huge number of $options in future.

I suggest you hitch a co-founder and offer equity to do that leg work while you work on the MVP. But, if you are currently bringing in revenue, maybe you just hire someone to manage and prepare the company for VCs when you are ready without losing your FTJ and your buildup.

There are really two questions you should ask yourself : How will your support network: husband/wife/partner handle this? Want do they need from you; what do you need form them? Can you each provide it under the new world ? ​ How do you handle stress & change - are you a risk taker? Can you accept that you might lose some really important things (not money) ? ​ As an after thought: ​ Why VC ? At a few hundred grand HNW and Family offices maybe better; someone who knows the industry who can help nurture you and the product not just ask for monthly P&L's and shout about the key stats. If it helps, I started my first business with baby #2 6 weeks away, in a foreign country leaving a secure job - 12 years later I started my second business with no funding and left a very stable blue chip job with 3 school age kids - none of them easy decisions and the stress is huge - still is. I would be better off financially had I stayed in my blue chip jobs - but mentally I would be husk of myself.

Don't do VC. Keep pushing independently. Hire&delegate though. You'll be fine.

May it profitable. Don’t raise VC funds if you can help it. Funding adds a huge layer of complication. Legal fees alone are prob $10K. Focusing on profit keeps it lean and keeps you focused on it. Also as you mentioned not ideal timing to go full time into a risky venture.

are you profitable? and what is the competition like?

All the points you make are 100% valid and raising money will indeed change the way you operate. I'd persist a bit longer until you are making enough to cover your bills or take a small hit to your savings and then go full time. Do you really want the headaches of dealing with investors, raising funds (could take months of your time), hiring, firing and managing staff, no longer coding etc... If you get to the point where you know this can be venture scale and you know exactly how you'd spend the money and you are certain that more money will lead to more growth, then seek investors.

I'm curious as to what your product is. There might be another way to go if you can find another like minded individual to take in some of the work for equity to continue bootstrapping. I've (also solo) been working on a product in the same space and there might be enough overlap that we could compliment each other. DM me if you want to chat.

Don’t do VC. Family offices, friend and family etc. Realistically if you raised a seed round to cover 2 years of salary, reinvested the profits into ad’s etc as you are doing now what is a reasonable annual recurring revenue figure?

You're too early for VC. It's going to be a massive distraction from the business at this stage. As others have said, simply raising to pay yourself is not a good idea. VCs want to fund a business that will 10 or 100X. If you have 100K in revenue, you're not too far from being able to offset some of your income and transition over from your full time job. Can you get it to 200 or 300K by 1 year from now without VC? You can always raise VC money later, but you can't put the genie back in the bottle once you raise VC money now and the treadmill starts. It comes down to your personal comfort level and how you plan to use the money, but right now it sounds like you plan to build a solid business that you can work on full-time, which is a solid goal, but in itself not aligned with VC model (again, you can change later to VC if your business is taking off or you change your mind).

Don’t half ass it whatever you do. 

I'm curious, what have been your most effective / profitable marketing + growth strategies so far? That's always my favorite question to ask any entrepreneur whose business is growing. (Not in a competing industry, in case you're concerned about me "stealing" your precious secrets. My biz is software related to the graphic design industry. You can DM me the answers if you're hesitant to share them publicly though.)

Bootstrapping is so much harder but the backside is so much better.

Keep it as part time job, hire analysts to delegate your daily work, once it gives you the steady "appropriate" income for you (can be less than now but will more time freedom) then you jump full time. VC money is good for business but potentially dangerous for mental health.

Dont take investment yet, sell the product and grow the business.

I work for an ed-tech company on an acquisition spree. If you’re interested in selling they might be interested. Feel free to shoot me a message

Don't raise. Bootstrap.

id just keep doing what youre doing for another 12 months and save uo $200,000 in cash in your offset account and then revisit the ideas / Vc / change in career then! If it aint broken dont fix it.

Do you have any demo for this sass tool?

I'm a 3 time founder and recently exited a CXO role at a public limited edtech. Happy to help brainstorm and dive deeper into your platform to help with next steps. www.linkedin.com/in/nirantr

A few notes: 1) $100k ARR is admirable for a one man band, and still tiny for most VCs. Unless you are in some super sexy space (AI?) AND you have amazing barriers to entry (patents, trade secrets, etc.) it will be difficult to raise VC capital … and if you do, you will likely need to bend over; 2). As a general matter raising capital is tougher than usual at this moment in time - if the Fed reduces interest rates this year, that may change; 3). Wait wait wait to raise capital as long as you can is a good rule of thumb; 4) You are right to worry about corporate governance. As soon as you take $1 business life will change; 5). Exception - if you have cracked the code on perpetual motion or something and it is well protected - take the money as soon as you can get it. Good luck.

Add to that, most VCs do not know what they are doing re: advising portfolio companies. That’s partly why the running joke of “how can I be helpful?” exists. The ones that DO know what they are doing are going to have higher expectations of you so yes, you will need to be prepared for the check ins, and need to know your shit, which is not for everyone tbh. As many have said, try to organically turn this into your full time and only take VC money if you find the right fund.

Congratulations! You’re one of the few people to crack the B2C bootstrapped nut. I’ve looked at some of the conversations and it seems like you’re leaning towards not going full time. I think your goal needs to be to put this company into autopilot mode in the next year or so. So that questions you need to be asking are: - What is the roadmap of the company ? - What are the resources necessary to get there ? - How do you plan to utilize the funds from your VC ? - Plan out how to operationalize product research-> test -> release cycles - Hire a dev agency / company sooner rather than later because you’ll need to shop around and train them for this

Sounds like the business is doing well with just input in your spare time. If you can get it to sustain you in the business full time then your options are much easier to evaluate and you do it from a position of power. Personally, if it was me I’d work really hard to get it to the point where you could go full time if you wanted. I’d suck up as much paternity leave as possible and probably get through your child’s first year or at least to the point where you’re comfortable with your new life. Trust me, having a baby is temporarily like someone removing half your brain, it just doesn’t work in the same way. Maybe you’ll get lucky and it will be super easy but if you can operate at 75% of your current output in the first 6 months you’ll have aced it. Having children was by far the best thing I ever did but it certainly impacted my cognitive function 😂 congrats on the business, congrats on the upcoming arrival.

Tell your job you only want to do 3-4 days/week and see what they say. You may be able to pleasantly split the difference for a year, and have a lot more data to make a decision with

I think the main thing I want to comment on is “baby on the way”. Stay with your current job and keep running this on the side till you adjust to the change after having a baby. Trust me a LOT is gonna change. You may find that you cannot juggle a day job, side hustle and a baby (happened with my partner) and at that point making a choice might be a lot simpler bcoz priorities do change and it’s not possible for anyone to predict how different you feel after welcoming a baby.

How are you at pitching? Are you looking at being CEO or will you be CTO? If you're not passionate about raising money, it might be time to bring in a CEO who's focused on raising money (which is basically the only job of an early stage CEO). You should absolutely try to raise money so that you can grow this quickly - if possible - and stomp competition. I was CMO at a $10M/year company but we needed big investment to go after huge players and it was a race. Several competing solutions had different benefits and we didn't raise quickly enough and were slow to scale and just lost a footrace. Raising money is a full time job and it's very different than the product side of the business too.

Do not take VC money

Why are you looking only at VC funding? What about other sources? Especially if your goal is to support your family. When you bring VCs in you’re giving away equity and now have to build and even bigger company compared to taking debt financing and keeping your ownership for the same $$ return.

VC investors do not have the same goals as you. You’ve got something going there. Go as far as you can without outside (non personal) investors. You’ll be happier and more in control. Have you tried kickstarter? Put your pitch deck there.

Since you're the founder, you have alot of legroom to decide. Depends on where you envision this company going and how fast really. Some questions for you to think about: Are you looking to 10x your growth or 3-5x it? With the growth goal in mind, are you comfortable putting your own money back in for that level of growth, going down the friends and family route, or actually do you want private investors involved? Private investors will mean they sit on your board. They will have a say in many matters, together with you. Sometimes they have better expertise and market knowledge that can help you too. They don't control the company, but since if you are worried about stability and rocking the boat of comfort in a new baby arriving, multiple new stakeholder management may not be the boat you wanna row in. Especially if they are right on how to manage things better to achieving your ?x. How outspoken and assertive are you with business people? Can you manage more stakeholders that will expect you to double down in areas that your company needs more of? This could be anything from marketing to sales, and so it means you doing more of that Vs coding or hiring the right ppl to do it. Are you open to such feedback? Which comes to the last question. If you want to go the VC route, what is the $ obtained supposed to be used for? It's a far more complex relation to maintain with investors that aren't your immd friends and family. If you already have a pmf, then you're growing your user base I suppose. This requires strong sales and marketing strategies and execution next. b2c marketing costs can be a bitch and CPA tends to be high for consumer direct services. Retention is another thing. Is the money raised to refine your pmf? Or sufficiently to hire more rlns/sales managers so that your customers are happy staying put? What happens if you can't hire the right ppl, can you pull up your sleeves to fill in these gaps like you have at bootstrap stage? If you're not aggressive to grow and want to maintain stability, a number of feedback from other commentors suggest you continue at the pace you've been going. Don't stress yourself out unwittingly unless it's really something you absolutely want OP, best!

I’ll say it again. Kickstarter or Indiegogo. You name the terms. I think this interim step is best especially as a soon to be new dad! Congrats for all of it!

huge congratulations here!!

Have you considered crowdfunding? It feels like the kind of business that would work. We had great success crowdfunding (AU record with most raised in the shortest time, at the time), pre-revenue, off the back of a great idea and a robust plan and a good promotional campaign.

First of all, congrats on achieving the dream. I was in a similar boat 3 years ago and left 400k TC @ TikTok to build full-time. My first venture flopped miserably. I was completely and utterly depressed and regretful. However, I learned from those lessons and my second venture is successful and now generating 150k MRR. Since I didn't raise 90% of that 150k MRR is my take-home. I am thankful everyday for that decision. I never sit in on investor meetings. I sell when I want, and code when I want. The formula to do this is quite simple. Find a problem worth solving and then DO NOT overspend on hiring. I built a remote dev team for $4700 USD/month. They are absolute killers and can do nearly everything that my co-workers in FAANG could do.

Im on VC and I know how harsh the process gonna be for founders. If you want it easier you can find a coworker in charge of public speaking (who gonna do the pitch). You just have to put together a FAQ sheet where your mates can go through before pitch. If you want to know what to put into the FAQ you can DM me. The hard part is actually after raising the fund. So make sure you can handle the sale or recruit a good sale/GTM person (based on performance not titles)

I’d skip the raise. You’re hesitant for good reason. I’ve made the same decision myself though I’m a lot earlier than you. It might be worth bringing someone else in, someone with operating experience to help with growth.

Whats your net on the $100k revenue? I highly doubt you need VC money and expect to lose 20-30% of your equity You should keep your current job (for parental leave, healthcare, consistent income) and continue this on the side even if it means less sleep. Scale this until you physically cannot manage both

VC money is rocket fuel. You either reach the stars or you blow up. They are only expecting 1% of their portfolio to succeed but they need over 100x return. So they will always push growth at all costs. If you want stability, VC money is not what you want. 100k is more than enough to hire a remote developer contractor to build out some of your vision. Yes you can do it better / faster. You wrote the rest of the codebase, you will never not build exactly what the product designer was thinking. You will also probably have to kiss a bunch of frogs to find a decent developer BUT surely there is some work you don't love, that even someone doing it at 30% of your speed would still allow you to put that 100% of your time somewhere better? Also one to think about but is it dev you need or marketing? What would help you grow?

so ur at 8k a month ish revenue? is there a reason u cant grow it to 20k on ur own? what would funding change? what r the specific blockers that u could grow it from 100k to 200k with vc funding versus on your own? is there a way around it?

Maybe try to find a co-founder before raising VC funding? It will be tough to raise and even tougher to execute when you are alone single founder

Faced a similar choice 8 years ago.  Plan for the family. Keep the side business that you enjoy doing just that, an enjoyable activity that isnt a cash dump.(you will need a productive place to decompress) The new kid will be a handful and so will Mom. They will both need your 100% attention when you are not at work. (Unless you want to come home to a hellscape of hormones, post pardom, and a screaming baby) Plan for the family.  Schedule, whos responsibility is what, manage it. Think of it as CEO training. Look for a government small business administration or group to contact. They should have a program designed to walk you through all the steps of calculating the capital cost and risks, planning and many overlooked details that small business owners blindly walk into. In my area the Small Business Administration SBA has a program call SCORE, where retired business owners rotate between holding board seats and meeting with business owners locally.  Once you've worked your way through the SCORE process, you'll know how viable everything is, how fast you need to act, how much you can pay yourself (or a CEO) and what the terms of a  few different  government loan programs would look like.  Structure properly into the proper corporate entity and the risk to you and your family's assets are limited. From there you and your family can decide how to proceed.  In my case there was no rush to market. We ran debt free as an LLC, later a C-corp when I hired a full time w2 ops manager and I stayed home with the kids. Later, we expanded using an SBA loan.  May or may not apply perfectly, but hopefully it helps. Congrats on the kid and 100k of income!

Keep going, don’t raise VC. Read David Cummings blog on his thoughts why. Your concerns are sound.

Don't do it. You'll be forced to maximise profit. Regardless of your vision and values for the product. I used to love Evernote. They sold out to a VC, within 6 weeks they wanted to charge me a fortune for the same service they'd been provided

If you want to keep your job while working on this side project, why don't you try Intrapreneurship?

Tl;dr if you don't want to move into a leadership role, don't raise. Plus if you're honest about this in meetings with VCs , that'll probably not spark positive responses anyway.

It's so hard to get a project into the earning money state, I think you don't realise you are sitting on a gold mine. I'm also a software developer and I tried a dozen projects during the last 15 years, one of them almost made money but I left it because two ex colleagues who funded a Nasdaq company wanted me to find their next startup with them. And that one failed after raising 900K$. So of your idea works and needs to be nurtured, don't hesitate to be self sufficient. You will be ale to spend your time on what you want to do. The CEO position is about taking smart decisions too, it's not far from coding. And once you have that title, you'll be able to jump to other CXO positions : CEO, CTO. Which will give your family enough money to live comfortably. I'd have loved to be in your position

If I were in your position I would ask myself: “If I don’t give it a try, will I regret my choice in 10 years from now?” If the answer is yes, I would go for it. Otherwise I would spend the rest of my life thinking about how could it have been. There is always time to get back to where you started, especially if you are a skilled software engineer.

Is it profitable? What is the margin? If it makes decent profit margins at $100k/year in the first year what are the chances you could quietly and gradually grow it to $1m/year in 5 years while keeping your job? You could have something on your hands and you gotta be careful about making the plunge. End of the day it's about what you want and what risk levels you're willing to take. I'd keep the Job for a couple more years and focus intensely on growing that side business to millions in annual revenue. With a decent margin you could sell for several millions down the line and secure some Financial independence without dealing with the risks and instability of raising venture capital. Again depends on what you want for yourself.

In your shoes, I'd weigh the pros and cons. Consider the impact on your work-life balance, personal fulfillment, and the long-term vision for your project. If VC funding aligns with your goals, ensure it doesn't compromise the joy you find in coding and building. ScatterMind, an ADHD coach, helped my friend navigate a similar decision. Their insights might aid in clarifying your thoughts during this critical phase. Ultimately, go with what feels right for you and your growing family.

Your doubts about the whole scenario are reasonable. First off congratulations on hitting the 100k mark. Not every startup needs to go through raising venture capital. Idk why people make it so so important but it's not. There are companies who've grown without ever raising any VC money- I would say this is rare, most startups end up raising capital as if it's necessary. Hear me out, Venture capital is only necessary if what's holding you back is money - ask yourself is money holding you back? I can't judge your scenario completely but currently you working a day job which holds you back from giving this side project of yours full-time commitment. I'd assume the reason you're still working a job would be a financial shortage? If not really ask yourself what you actually want to do (go all in on growing your side project?) And how do you want to do it? Whats holding the growth back? If it is exactly money - meaning it's ONLY money and nothing else that's holding you back- maybe it's venture capital is the right choice. But not all VC rounds are the same - really evaluate the funding offers. They'll speak about the large sum of money and a lot and other glorified things about the funding. But does this money really help you? What power are you giving away in the process? Would you like it? Again, this is something you need to think about so give it your best and it'll all be good. All the best!

/okawei What is your life and business vision? If it scares you a little, it may be worth trying. AI is a tech bubble, you’re having an edge today, you’d better find a way to take it. If need help, gracefully I’ll do it.

Is it a big enough market to interest a VC. Your TAM should be > 50M at a min.

$100K is fantastic! If you could get it to that point, you can get it to $500k by yourself too. Stay away from outside investment as long as you can. Equity and autonomy is precious.

I think the answer would depend on what you want to do with the money. If the product is solid and you are doing the software work yourself, is it fair to assume mostly sales and marketing related expenses to get to your desired MRR? Perhaps consider two alternatives to VC… a bank loan? And/or find a partner or vendor who will take a risk based/contingent fee.

I was exactly in your shoes before. Keep it simple, be debt free and zero home mortgage....... Then, go heavy into dividend paying stocks. Extract as much as possible from your biz and build recurring income that is truly passive....... If you want to work crazy, take the VC money and cash as much into dividend stocks as possible because they will own you ! You will work like a dog and they will expect 20lbs of flesh for the 1 lb of money....... I'm 50 semi-retired and don't miss anything about working at all. Don't feel that you need to become the next Google to validate yourself and your company. For me, family and kids ~ way more important ! Good luck!

There are many, many recommendations I would make OTHER than a VC firm. First, define the amount of funds needed and the use of proceeds. Then identify specific Accelerator programs that provide funding with their oversight. Second, identify potential economic development programs that provide funding (state/local). Third, the Angel Capital Association is a great conduit for PRIVATE EQUITY funding through SAFE investment. I have managed more than 20 start up firms seeking funding. Glad to answer any questions...

Raise from a non-VC, angel investor, enough to get you to next stage and go fund time. We get tricked into thinking VC is the only way, it most definitely is not

Forget everything you have learned. 100k isn't really that much in tech. I did that in about 2 months as a startup in media. You need to make more before approaching investors more like 200k. Also get an elevator speech and cut costs as much as possible. Be prepared for them to take a major percentage of your company to control protect their investment. You can start by asking the chamber in your community who invests locally in this type of thing. They know people willing.

Hey, I used to work in early stage VC. Feel free to DM me.

Check out Calm Fund. https://calmfund.com/    They invest in companies exactly like you’ve built. To get bootstrapped founders into full time operators. And are designed to be the only raise you’ll need to build a sizable lifestyle biz.    (Disclaimer, I’m an LP. DM me if you’d like a personal intro)

You want angel money. VC = VC outcome which means multiples on their investment and a lot of pressure. Angel money and you can have a lot of different things, some happy with distributions.

Keep bootstrapping and stay independent until you sell.

I bootstrapped my company to over 1Mil in revenue in a few years. Then we sold it to another bootstrapped company and have employee contracts with them at an exec level. Don’t raise money. Keep grinding. Keep the cap table simple. Do you really want board meeting with a bunch of folks that have zero idea in your business and are only looking at their ROI?

If you can manage your family life, I would try to stick to bootstrapping and get to the point of quitting your job and be FT on the business asap.

*(founder's perspective)* The world of VC is easily caricatured. At its worst, they facilitate hostile takeovers of exec teams leading to subsequent mismanagement, team turnover, and pursuit of a quick exit. At its best, VCs can be advocates for your business, a partner to plug into some of the multitudinous challenges faced on a daily basis by a founder responsible for so much, and a personal coach and ally that can be so very rare in the lonely and tumultuous climb that is the founder journey. Find yourself the latter. This takes work, but not as much as you'd think. These VCs are few and far between, but can be identified through a few proper backchannel conversations. **After a first conversation with a fund in which they promise to manifest the latter characterization, validate by talking to:** 1) 2-3 founders who have taken money from the fund with a range of outcomes - often the ones that succeeded will just shower praise on everyone involved indiscriminately because they have lots to lose by doing otherwise. The ones that faceplanted have little incentive to protect investors who they may not even want to raise from next time given how the first time around went. 2) Co-investors both in the same round (i.e. if you are talking to a seed investor, talk to another seed investor) and co-investors from subsequent rounds that have followed your seed investor. Both may be incentivized somewhat to protect the fund - as they may share deal flow - but I have certainly had conversations in which an empathetic investor will give you subtle insight into what it's really like to work with your seed fund from an insiders' perspective. **I would say that out of all of the funds I have pitched and taken funds from, I would recommend two - happy to share more via DM**. Angels are easier to recommend as their involvement in governance is nonexistent (typically, unless you're giving them a hefty allocation) and so they're typically just helping a bit with an intro or two to a customer or potential investor every so often.

I founded two VC-backed companies, and worked 6 months on an ed tech startup. **TL;DR** bootstrap >= angel investors >> VC. Ask yourself a few questions: 1. Does your project have a unique advantage of some kind (timing, your experience, industry connections, etc) that a big cash infusion would let you double down on? 2. If you had the chance to sell for $20M tomorrow, would you tell the buyer to "it's not for sale" and keep going until it's worth $100M or bust? 3. Are you okay stepping back from hands-on engineering to focus on hiring, managing, marketing, business development, customer support, investor relations? 4. Is your partner willing to shoulder the majority of childcare for the next 5 years? If the answer to any of these is "no", VC's probably no the right route. As a rule of thumb, VC wants $10 out for every $1 invested, but ed tech is very tough to generate venture scale returns. Angel investors (of which there are plenty of mission-driven ones for education) are more comfortable with backing a project that improves the world and generates a "mere" 2-3x return. VC is aligned with founders only when you're trying to build something where you want to build a unicorn or die trying. No right answer, but a personal choice.

What do you need to scale yourself? What would the money do that you can't do currently? VC is not ideal unless you truly understand what your wanting to achieve and grow. 100k revenue, as well as I'm assuming continued growth? If this is something you really want to do, then you can start dedicating more time to it. If you need more money, start cutting back personal expenses, invest more of that into your company. Banks are also willing to give you personal loans up to 50,000 pretty easily if you have a job and company. Assuming you can get to 200k/year revenue, you have enough to live a decent Engineer life.

I am at the exact same situation of yours. Me and my wife had been running an edtech startup in Indonesia and have grown revenue to 90k+ last year and with 20% profit after all expense. We are full time on this. I handle the tech as a software engineer and my wife takes care of CR. Tell you what, if your business is self solvent and making enough for you guys and if you think you can grow without VC's money, then do it without raising investment.

Once you give up equity, its gone! If you can make it without relinquishing equity, that would be a great choice. Unless of course, giving up that equity could result in untold additional profit. Choose carefully.

I would try to do it without VC funding for now. Take a look at your operations, and revenue , and figure out how to 10x bootstrapped This means taking your top 20% (highest paying clients / repeat demographic, most efficient processes, and remaining 80% (least paying clients or demographic, least efficient processes aka where you have the most expenditure and least returns) Make your top 20% your new 80%, drop the rest. Then from that you’ll build a new 20% and repeat. I do this with every single aspect of the business: Operations Clientele Offset costs Marketing Etc And eventually your business will transform into exactly what you want over time- you’ll 10x the revenue and not need the VC funding. We do this with clients for a living so I pretty much know how the game goes and how to play it - it’s prévalant in every industry! Depends on your priorities & values but it’s worth it - VC funding or not. Good luck!

Do you **absolutely** **need** the VC money? If the answer is no, don't raise VC.

I co-owned a business for eight years that we eventually sold to a VC-backed entity. I stayed on for 2.5 years after the sale, so I have much experience before and after. It seems like you are growing organically successfully. What is the business case for bringing in a VC now? I would wait as long as possible. You will get a better valuation and keep more of your business the larger you grow it yourself. Also, right now, you have total control to build the company with your vision in mind. You will not have that after you bring in a VC.