Bootstrappers are measured by their REVENUES. But VC-funded companies are measured by their VALUATIONS or their latest FUNDING.
Isn’t it interesting how tech and business media treat companies that didn’t raise any outside funding?
Valuations are both much bigger numbers AND very made up. More made up than real revenue numbers.
It’s just harder to get to a “$1 Billion!” headline story with revenues. 10x harder.
I get it. The media is just shouting about the biggest number they can find.
Since bootstrapped software companies don’t share their private revenue numbers and never raised money from investors, there’s no easy story there.
So practical software companies don’t get talked about much.
- No big numbers to share.
- No big articles.
- No big social media attention.
- No big “most like to advertise with us” media awards.
Zoho is a profitable $1B revenue software company with no outside funding.
By any simple measure, this company is worth $5 billion or $10 billion or more.
Just another bootstrapped “decacorn”–a $10B+ valuation for a private company (10X a unicorn).
Just like Mailchimp and others before that got big without outside funding, but didn’t get much media attention.
You guys are seeing this right?
VC-funded companies are AT MOST 25% of software companies in the world, but they get all the attention. Mostly about their latest funding and implied valuation.
There are a LOT of bootstrapped and lightly funded software companies out there. Way more than you can see.
And more founders who won their “founder-scale” exits than VC-funded unicorn exits. These practical founders just didn’t make VC-press headlines.
VC funding isn’t bad or wrong. It’s just not useful for most software founders.
Big VC funding is far from the only way you can grow a successful software company.
There are multiple ways to play the software startup game to win.
