Ask HN: When did you decide it was time to raise capital?

[Eawrig05]

I founded a company about 5 months ago. We're currently at roughly $60k MRR, profitable, and I only have one employee.

We've spent essentially nothing on marketing. Most growth has come from outreach, referrals, and customer demand.

I’m wrestling with two questions. First, at this stage, would you raise capital or continue bootstrapping? Second, how did you determine what was actually limiting growth in your business? Was the bottleneck engineering, sales, marketing, or something else?

[pmpmpmpm]

#1 CONGRATS! If nothing is blocking you from organic user growth (4-5% week over week), keep bootstrapping. Determining what limits growth is a discovery process, not a one time question to ask. Talk to customers (potential & current) to find out why they convert at all, why they stay, & what would make them change. Look at your unit costs, app metrics, & sales/marketing pipeline (CAC). The goal is to reach everyone you want as cheaply as possible, if any part of your business isn’t doing that the cost to fix it is the thing blocking you from growing. If you can afford to change bootstrap, if you can’t raise the money fundraise. Fundraising gets you a war chest to move faster but it can also be a distraction, so do it when it’s easiest for you (i.e. the cash is chasing you not the other way around). Hope this helps!