Why This Founder Never Took VC Money (Then Sold for $200M)

Well, there's a few different factors.

One is worth noting the sign of the times.

So, you know, there was a dot-com boom, but there was very much a dot-com bust in, you know, 2001.

Was that 2000? 2001 timeframe.

Um, and so not only was capital not available for tech startups, but the vibe was very anti-capital actually, because a lot of these startups had raised lots of money and crushed crash and burn.

So there was very much a little bit of a rise of a culture of, of one, don't do anything in tech.

Tech is done.

You know, I had a friend tell me the internet's done, you know, which realize is not true.

Um, But also, there's just not a culture around raising capital around that time.

If anything, there's just more and more businesses going out of business.

So one is just like nature of the time.

It just wasn't.

And it was good and not distracting.

That was good.

I am a pretty independent person.

And when I was going to business school in the late 90s, I remember we would have VCs come talk as part of some entrepreneurship speaker series.

And they very much sent this vibe that you kind of need us, like we're the value.

And I do think VCs can be very valuable, but it dismissed the value of the founder and the customer and the early employees and early customers.

And I kind of resented that a little bit.

So I probably went in starting mine with a little bit more attitude and a little bit more sense that, hey, like, I don't think I really need you.

But when we started getting a little bit of traction, I remember I have a lot of VC friends or folks that were friends, early stage VCs back in the day.

And, you know, they're like, well, maybe when you get to this point or that point, I'm thinking like, what? you're nice people, but

why do

I need you? You know, if I stay really focused on just getting more customers, let me just do that.

And my co-founder also believed that.