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by tptacek
5671 days ago
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Personally, I think you should self-fund the whole shebang. Are you willing to live on ramen for years? Good on you. Really. Bucket my take as "the perspective of a founder with a family to take care of", noting only that if you forego the externally-funded "aim the cannon at the moon and shoot yourself out of it" game plan, you can do better for yourself with a startup than ramen. |
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> Are you willing to live on ramen for years? Good on you. Really.
Indeed I was (during grad school), and am, as are many/most YC alumni.
And I hesitate to mention this as it's such conventional wisdom -- but as for self-funding, absolutely one should bootstrap for as long as possible before accepting outside investment. To further belabor the obvious, pay yourself well when the company is profitable, or even better wait for exit. Here's Peter Thiel on the same topic:
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http://techcrunch.com/2008/09/08/peter-thiel-best-predictor-...
The lower the CEO salary, the more likely it is to succeed. The CEO’s salary sets a cap for everyone else. If it is set at a high level, you end up burning a whole lot more money. It aligns his interest with the equity holders. But [beyond that], it goes to whether the mission of the company is to build something new or just collect paychecks.
In practice we have found that if you only ask one question, ask that.