<story><title>After raising $125M at my last company, I’m bootstrapping this one</title><url>https://medium.com/swlh/after-raising-125m-at-my-last-company-i-m-bootstrapping-this-one-here-s-why-70f0d914f2fb</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>birken</author><text>It is tough to have these two mentalities at the same time:&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; Your employees adopt your bootstrapped mentality and they, too, are careful of where they spend your money and try to be as resourceful as they can with limited resources&lt;p&gt;and&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; Could I go and raise a few million bucks in a seed&amp;#x2F;series A round today? As a second-time founder, yes — I’ve said no to several investors already and have a strong network.&lt;p&gt;The biggest expense in almost any startup is employee salaries, so raising money almost certainly means higher salaries for employees.  So you are basically saying: &amp;quot;I&amp;#x27;m rich and have connections, but it is better for the business if we all are very lean&amp;quot;.  While it is true that being lean is probably better for the business, it only works if the employees buy into it.  Maybe you are giving employees tons of equity and that causes them to buy in, but otherwise the whole thing seems pretty hollow.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>angelbob</author><text>Other than equity, there are a number of choices there. One is working conditions: you have a lot more freedom to grant people unusual working conditions if you answer to nobody. Another is compensation. Not only could you grant more equity, you can also use contractors or part-timers more freely, or otherwise mess around in ways that VCs tend to frown on.&lt;p&gt;VCs are very optimized for &amp;quot;go big or go home.&amp;quot; It&amp;#x27;s nice to not have that pressure early on, for the founders &lt;i&gt;and&lt;/i&gt; the other employees.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s interesting how different the feel is at different companies -- VC-backed vs private-equity-backed vs public. Bootstrapped is potentially a different feel, and a better match for some people.&lt;p&gt;Does it work out that way in practice? No clue. Never worked for one of these, though I&amp;#x27;ve worked for VC-backed, private-backed and public.</text></comment>
<story><title>After raising $125M at my last company, I’m bootstrapping this one</title><url>https://medium.com/swlh/after-raising-125m-at-my-last-company-i-m-bootstrapping-this-one-here-s-why-70f0d914f2fb</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>birken</author><text>It is tough to have these two mentalities at the same time:&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; Your employees adopt your bootstrapped mentality and they, too, are careful of where they spend your money and try to be as resourceful as they can with limited resources&lt;p&gt;and&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; Could I go and raise a few million bucks in a seed&amp;#x2F;series A round today? As a second-time founder, yes — I’ve said no to several investors already and have a strong network.&lt;p&gt;The biggest expense in almost any startup is employee salaries, so raising money almost certainly means higher salaries for employees.  So you are basically saying: &amp;quot;I&amp;#x27;m rich and have connections, but it is better for the business if we all are very lean&amp;quot;.  While it is true that being lean is probably better for the business, it only works if the employees buy into it.  Maybe you are giving employees tons of equity and that causes them to buy in, but otherwise the whole thing seems pretty hollow.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>pbreit</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s another example of &amp;quot;the properties of gasses&amp;quot;: they expand to fill their containers. The more money you have, the more money you spend, even if you don&amp;#x27;t really need to.</text></comment>