Most bootstrapped SaaS founders place a high value on their independence and control, and they are willing to pay that price.
They prioritize being able to do things their way without asking for permission.
This precious autonomy can make it difficult to raise practical funding from growth equity investors or sell most of their companies to private equity acquirers.
But there are ways to achieve both—keeping control over the big decisions and partnering with major investors.
Roy van den Broek is the founder and CEO of Rentman, a rental business management software platform for event and media production companies.
Roy built software for his event equipment rental business in the Netherlands. He had over 100 software customers in Europe before selling his rental equipment company in 2015 to focus on growing his Rentman SaaS company.
Rentman grew slowly and profitably as word of mouth spread in the industry and their product evolved.
In 2024, after growing to nearly 100 employees and 200,000 users across 100 countries, he raised a $22 million growth equity round from Expedition Capital to derisk the founder’s investment and add growth capital to continue expanding.
Roy built a valuable business and wanted to take some money off the table, but he didn’t want to give up control of the big decisions.
Here’s how he described this on my podcast this week:
“We had a lot of interest in investing in Rentman after COVID, so we ran a quick process. We ended up with 3 term sheets. You have multiple ways to look at these term sheets. You can look at the numbers and the valuation, which is a big part.
“But what’s often overlooked is the other terms. The other terms are as important as the valuation because they really determine the way you work together. I think these terms might even more important than the valuation. You got to understand their game and really figure out if you could get some alignment.
“In essence, you are negotiating the amount of autonomy that you have as a founder. That’s basically what we prioritized. Like the board seats and who makes certain decisions, what are the decisions that require a majority vote? And I think we were able to get 100% autonomy on our side.“
The big dollar number is usually the only thing we hear about in a major transaction, but the terms of those agreements vary wildly.
In this episode, Roy also discusses:
- How they managed the painful growth stages as they expanded from one employee to 80 global employees
- Building a multi-lingual product and business
- Why he chose to raise a significant growth equity investment.
Check out this in-depth interview with Roy van den Broek on the Practical Founders Podcast.
