| Hi rjett - No worries, we don't view this as belittling. I actually bootstrapped the company for a year, did the go into debt thing, give up possessions etc. before my cofounder Andrey joined up. We also closed our first revenue deal at 600 users, pre YCombinator. We discussed the benefits of YC in great detail before applying, and again before accepting the invite. In between, I met with 10 of the YC alum founders to learn what value they extracted from/redistributed into the program. We went through a similar values clarification session before we accepted angel/seed money. The funding we've taken to date is convertible debt and will allow us to grow at a faster rate than a smaller, bootstrapped, 2 person 'lifestyle' business. Pre TC launch, we were growing at a steady rate month/month with no effort/cost to acquire users, but we decided we'd like to catalyze the company with the adrenaline shot you mention. As you said, the network effect is very challenging to generate with bootstrapped resources. When we saw the opportunity to grow at a faster rate, we went for it, and it's been a great ride so far. |