Ask HN: Will Bootstrapping See a Resurgence?
As we make it through 2023, we're slowly seeing some younger venture funded startups unwind, as they struggle to meet the inflated valuations of the last few years. This isn't really surprising.
So what are the second order effects we're going to see? Will bootstrapping businesses surge a bit? Something else?
Published in 2023, this chronicle by @caprock details the mechanics of building a profitable, self-funded business without venture backing.
Core Principles for Independent Builders:
Charging customers from day one acts as the ultimate filter for building software that solves genuine, high-urgency problems.
Keeping fixed overhead low and leveraging lean infrastructure allows founders to stay alive until market tailwinds kick in.
Small, repetitive improvements in customer retention and conversion rates yield massive returns over multi-year horizons.
Community Debate Themes:
The community focused on B2B customer acquisition channels, cold email vs SEO distribution, and balancing full-time employment with side-project development.
CATEGORY Bootstrapping & MRR →
HISTORICAL ERA Post-ZIRP & AI (2023–2026)
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Yes. Yes. Yes. And I want to say that the next big thing amongst sane new entrepreneurs will be "Grant-strapping". Check out Rupak Doshi at TurboSBIR and AFWERX. Use Google and Linkedin. $250k cheques, equity free. No more incubators taking their cut for doing eff all.
There are SO many companies that have great products that are shut down because they are "zombies". Bullshit. They were sustainable, they had people earning money to grow their families, paying taxes to make the outside world happen.
They made one mistake. They just did not grow to the required venture size to be slaughtered by VC's and served to their friends.
Bury the tech. Bury the service. Drag down progress. I was in a startup that got offered $40m. The Investors said no, they wanted $400 Million. 3 months later. about 90 jobs lost and all that work vaporized. Customers absolutely bemused.
So bootstrapping is in. Will be big again. If folk are interested I have a ton of reading, material and resources I can share. It really is a mind over matter thing. And once you get to the stage to clearly say why you need investor money ( like if you want to do photonic pooling research and need lab equipment etc).
And actually makes more sense.
Bootstrapping forces discipline that the VC's dont want younger leaders to have. They want them to burn through cash and ask for more at a lousier evaluation so they can get more bang for their buck. And yes I witnessed that at first hand after that startup. As a programmer I should recognize patterns. Fail.
VC's are not evil people, they just do their job. Oddly they make your mom's pension funds work in many cases :-)
They should not make out that they are likeable though.
Bootstrap was always around, and will always be around. It's just that they don't make headlines as much.
If it can't become a unicorn, it has to be bootstrapped. It's how the VC game works. There's exceptions, notably 500 Startups have said that they're happy with "my little ponies" ($10m or so) but there's very few who play in this space. Most VCs would consider it a failure and force the startup to either unicorn or die.
I'd say anything that can't hit a valuation of $1B or $10m is in very fertile grounds to be bootstrapped. They're too small to be VC backed and won't face all the suppression fire they'd get when competing with VCs. They're still acquirable; Android was angel backed and not VC backed then acquired for a ridiculously cheap price of $50m. That's enough money for most people to be happy with (including the angel investor).
I think it is inevitable we will "bootstrapping" become more popular. Investors are sitting on a ton of dry powder and the future is uncertain. Great businesses will have no problem getting the capital they need but new business without a proven business model or first time founders will definitely have a hard time raising capital.
Additionally, a lot of money is being pooled into AI companies so if you are starting a non-AI business it could be wise to bootstrap for a while until you get some sort of traction or PMF.
We are also seeing the rise of Solopreneurs who are not taking on capital and building cash flowing businesses from day one through leveraging their skillset and expertise.
As the economy starts to pick back up and interest rates mellow out we will probably get back to the "good ol' days" of free flow capital until something else disrupts the system.
i bootstrapped a hw business and looking back i regret it. i thought i could raise at a better valuation later, and trusted this logic after reading about it on hackernews years ago. however what i found is that the investors i pitched once i had customers, were no longer interested because they thought the traction was too small, and they did not take into account the miniscule capital it took to get there and the impressive effort delivered. so once you have revenue that will be used as a reference. if that revenue is not astronomically large then chances are you can no longer raise and you are stuck without funding to market and sell or hire. to date i have been unable to find a solution to this problem. acquiring customers is not free. curious to hear other similar stories and potential hacks to this problem.
I think one of the under-discussed consequences of generative AI will be that a single person / small team will be able to scale much more easily than before. It's very likely that a contemporary startup team of 3 people is equivalent to 10 or 20 people from a decade ago. Considering that a substantial portion of funding is typically aimed at hiring talent, this will definitely make bootstrapping more popular.