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Comment by auspex | Hacker News Reader

For founders who do not have a network the best bet is come to the table with paying customers and a pipeline. It is hard to deny growth and success.

Do a lot of outreach trying to get someone to see the numbers and open the door to talk.

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i had all that and didn’t raise money. i also moved to the bay area. didn’t matter either. the idea or business didn’t matter. it became clear you need a strong network of people who know people. and that takes a lot of time. if you are building a product you have no time for that.

Once you have paying customers and growth, the appetite for investor money goes down very quick.

When I was younger, decades ago, I always wondered why investors keep saying we need to have customers and revenue first before plonking down millions; why would I need investors when I have paying customers?? Then we got paying customers, customers paying millions/year and we found out why we need investors. Not all businesses do but even little more than slow growth is pretty hard when bootstrapped; we exhausted bank loans pretty fast as they are too conservative.

Depends. If you are happy with a lifestyle business or low 7 digit outcome, then yes.

If u are aiming for at least $100m exit, you might need the $$$

if marketing / sales is free you can scale it up without funds. unfortunately, i came to experience first hand it is not. i doubt you can scale without paying for marketing somehow.

I have found that the more excited that a customer is excited about a product the more apt they are to be your best salesperson. This was especially true for one of my consumer SaaS.

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