[fairity]

Congratulations. I can relate with your journey - going from living in cockroach-infested apartments to bootstrapping a $70m ARR business. Random question, but do you think it's feasible to go public without institutional investors? My co-founder & I have been seeing a ton of businesses with seriously weaker financial metrics going through SPAC's (see GETR). But, we're wondering if this outcome is gated by first raising from VC or PE.

[raiyu]

Is it possible yes. You do not need VC to go public. It’s not a requirement.

Also this whole journey started a decade ago. There are many more avenues for liquidity and for raising capital. However it is a bit gated.

However if you have good advisors and ensure you retain control with board structure and dual class voting shares you shouldn’t look at as a negative

[fairity]

Thank you. We turned down VC because we're concerned about the stranglehold they have on exit outcomes. I guess everything is negotiable, and I need to get better at communicating our concerns around control in a way that builds trust with investors. It's cool that you're open to having conversations like this. I imagine when you're publicly successful, you get inundated with people seeking help.