The practical founders of growing software companies that I talk to every week never took big outside funding.

None of them are talking about LAYOFFS right now. It doesn’t come up.

They are just talking about the usual hard stuff: selling, hiring, improving their products, keeping customers happy, getting it all done, and growing internally as their companies grow.

They never got hooked on big outside funding.

So they don’t have important investors who told them to “Go faster and spend and hire more!” last year…

Only to tell them to “Go slower and get to cash flow positive with layoffs!” this year.

Bootstrapped and lightly funded companies aren’t better than startups with big funding.

But they don’t have to put their company and people and culture at risk with the huge ups and downs that investors require.

Layoffs are just part of the game in the cycles of venture funding that follow the boom and bust of the public stock markets.

The last four founders I interviewed on the Practical Founders podcast have growing companies with revenues between $3M and $30M ARR. Several were more than 10 years old.

Each of them talked about how proud they were to never miss a payroll and never have a layoff. None of them took big outside funding.

Their first priority was to run a stable enough business for their teams to thrive in the long run.

This didn’t seem very cool in 2021 when funding was easy and hiring and salaries were crazy.

But now it seems very cool. Just keep improving and growing efficiently to make your customers and your employees happy.

Most of the time big funding doesn’t make the startup growth game any easier or less risky–in the long run.

#practicalfounders