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Comment by brianwawok | Hacker News Reader

Most seed givers such as YC won’t let you. If your goal is seed -> bootstrap, you will be auto rejected.

VCs want you to hit it big or burn out within 5-10 years. Remember they are using investors money, and investors want their money back.

If your plan is to bootstrap (which I think is wise and the path I took with my current startup) , look into angels and Friends and family Rounds. Most family rounds are totally OK with a longer horizon. That said, not all people have the friends and family to do such a raise, in which case what do you do?

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Actually, at YC we tell every company we fund that ideally they would treat every dollar they raise from investors as the last, and get profitable from the money they raised already.

Not every company can do that (i.e., Boom, which is building supersonic airplanes) but if you can, you should.

At equal execution, I suspect there is often (but not always) a direct relationship between investment and speed of execution / time to profitability (since with more investment it will be easier to attract great talent and iterate faster).

Assuming what I'm saying above is correct, that means that YC is advising founders to take the slow road to profitability? (Nothing wrong with that!)

Not quite. The ideal situation is to not have to raise money, by being default alive: http://www.paulgraham.com/aord.html

Just because you don't have to raise money doesn't mean you never do. Sometimes founders who are running a profitable business and don't need investors will nonetheless choose to raise money because someone offers it on very good terms and they believe they can use it to grow faster.

If founders did not need to raise money, you would be out of a job yah?

Which of the companies in your portfolio have successfully done this? I.e. reach profitability early on then not raise future funding rounds?

Would also like to hear from other YC alums about how much pressure they felt to hire faster than they were comfortable with vs stay steady and profitable?

> ...in which case what do you do?

https://earnestcapital.com/what-we-invest-in/ is one such "not vc" VC (?)

"We are not the best fit investors for founders who have a business plan of raising millions more in capital every 12 to 18 months. We’re not opposed to our founders raising more capital later on, but we have a strong preference for opportunities where the Plan A after raising from us is to get to break-even and grow the business through cashflows. Typically founders raising more than $2m will not be a fit for us."

I like it, there is a definite need for this kind of investing in the market. No you can't launch an Uber or AirBNB in a crowded marketplace like this, but not all marketplaces are as crowded.

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