Product-Market Fit Means Different Things to Founders and VCs

by | Mar 5, 2023

Investors and bootstrappers have very different reactions to achieving real Product-Market Fit.

Big Funding Investors:

  • Great! You have finally happy customers and accelerating revenue.
  • You should add our rocket fuel funding to go faster and sell the company for big money to pay us back times 10 or 100!
  • You have to deliver the return on capital that we promised our investors no matter what.

Bootstrapped SaaS Founders:

  • Great! We finally have happy customers, accelerating revenue, and a very efficient business model.
  • We can grow steadily and profitably and not screw it up by going too fast with way more risk!
  • Maybe we’ll sell the business soon, raise a little money, or maybe we’ll run it for 20 years, but it’s our choice and our prize.

Same PMF. Different goals in life.

#practicalfounders

Greg Head posted this on LinkedIn on March 5, 2023.

Check out the comments and join the discussion on LinkedIn.

Related Posts

Nail It Before Your Scale It – With People and AI

The main reason for raising VC funding was to hire lots of talent quickly. People first, process second. Remember those days? Almost no founder thinks like that now. The old practical wisdom is coming back: Figure it out first before you ...

Going All-In-One in System of Record SaaS

Who’s still getting a lot of attention from acquirers and investors these days in B2B SaaS, with serious multiples? Sticky “run your business” vertical SaaS apps that are both a system of record and a system of action that businesses won’t ...

Your Growth Rate Doesn’t Tell The Whole Story

Two SaaS founders can end the year with wildly different growth rates—and both be right about how it went. In my work with dozens of bootstrapped SaaS CEOs at Practical Founders, the real tension isn’t fast vs. slow growth—it’s whether the ...
No results found.