[Deimorz]

Also worth noting that according to Crunchbase, Soup received at least €80,000 in venture capital in 2007 and 2008: https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/soup-io#section-fund...

Yes, that's not a massive amount of money and it was a long time ago, but it should still mean that they're not totally in control of the company, and that there are investors that have been expecting a return out of it eventually. Just reaching a break-even/moderately-profitable state probably wouldn't have been good enough.

I also see this article on TechCrunch talking about "soup.me" receiving $530,000 in VC in 2012: https://techcrunch.com/2012/02/14/soup-me-lands-530000-lets-...

It specifically says that it's a "reboot service" of soup.io, but the soup.me site no longer exists, so I'm not certain. Their inactive Twitter account (https://twitter.com/soup_me) does have an identical logo and a location of Vienna (same as soup.io), so it's probably true that it's the same company.

That's definitely a much larger amount of VC, and would make it even less possible for "sustainable" to be an acceptable end goal for the site.

[masukomi]

it was 80k over 2 rounds. That means that they weren't able to raise even 80k at once. That's not "I'm investing money because I expect you to turn a profit for me money" that's "here, I'll float you a little because i like you / your idea and maybe... maybe it'll pan out and I'll get a nice return."

[nacs]

Outside of SV, thats plenty of money to bootstrap a company. Watch an episode of Shark tank -- there 'investments' typically are in the 100K to 200K for the bigger deals they do and many are less than 50K.

[strombofulous]

50k? Serious question from someone who's never tried: why not just get a loan? I've only watched one episode (I hated it, it reminded me way too much of black mirror's "15 million merits") but the deals they were cutting were... not good. Is it really that hard to get a loan for 50k as a business? Isn't that what small business loans are for?

[nacs]

1) A lot of the people who come on there are 1st time business owners and don't have much experience negotiating with investors

2) The "Sharks"/investors really push the whole "yes I'm taking 30% of your company for $30K but I bring in a ton of value in advice and connections" thing alll the time and most of the time, the people go for it

3) I'm pretty sure the whole pressure of appearing on TV and getting grilled for 6 hours in front of cameras (apparently the 10-20 minutes they show on TV actually takes around 6 hours) and then walking home without any deals feels like a missed opportunity for the business owners so they eventually just give in and end up taking any "deal" the sharks throw out which is almost always terrible

[kolinko]

Loans are way harder to get in Europe, especially for entrepreneurs.

So, first of all - it’s virtually impossible for someone to take a $50k loan unless they have a “stable” job.

Secondly: $50k in Poland would take 4-5 years to repay for a programmer. I don’t think it’s smart to take that much risk when you’re young.

[wrsh07]

If you're on shark tank it's because one of

1) you think the company would benefit from the publicity (even if you don't get an investment)

2) it's a total last resort

3) you want to meet the investors / have your fifteen minutes

[downvoteme1]

Business loans do not happen without a personal guarantee where you have to put your home or other hard assets as a collateral or have a ton of incoming revenue that can be scalped .

[no_identd]

Nonsense. A cosigner can also suffice in many cases because it splits the rate payment risks for the bank.