Would your product be better without VC money?
Venture capital can be rocket fuel.
But sometimes it feels more like strapping yourself to a rocket you don’t fully control.
If I had never raised a dollar, how would my product look different?
Would it be slower? Maybe.
More intentional? Possibly.
Closer to what users actually want? Probably.
I’m not anti-VC. Far from it. But I wonder if chasing scale too early sometimes pulls us away from the messy, beautiful phase where products become real.
Curious to hear from both sides:
— If you’ve raised, what’s one way VC funding reshaped your product (for better or worse)?
— If you’ve bootstrapped, do you ever wonder what could’ve happened with external capital?
Let’s unpack this one.
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Replies
Bootstrapping kept me grounded. Every dollar mattered and so did every customer. I think outside capital could've sped things up but it might've distracted me from building something truly useful.
First Answer
@mahindra_pasman I can totally relate. At First Answer we’ve been bootstrapping too, and it really sharpens your priorities, every feature, every customer, every dollar has to matter.
VC money is great rocket fuel… but sometimes you just want a bike that actually works. We stayed bootstrapped with our AI detector.