JavaScript and Friends Conference Organizer,Dot Net Open Source Days Organizer, Community Meetups Organizer,Auth0 Ambassador, CloudinaryMDE, NativeScript, Vue Enthusiast, Azure Solutions Architect
From your experience how did you secure funding for your business as your operations grew. What are some suggestions you would like to provide for any one starting newly ?
I'll start by saying you should take this with a grain of salt as I'm very biased towards not taking funding. Let me explain.
First off there's a a great network of incubators that can help you -- if you have an idea that really requires funding (if you're building Uber, you're gonna need some capital of course). Businesses that are building marketplaces, wherein you act as the market, will likely require some sort of funding to handle settling of transactions. Otherwise I think taking a good look at at Y-Combinator or Hatch are great places to get some advice and/or funding. It also acts as filter to validate your ideas. If they aren't willing to take you on, then there's something either wrong or that needs to be improved.
OK, with that all out of the way, I deeply feel that more and more founders and businesses can probably go without funding whatsoever. You can either save up for a period of time to keep yourself afloat financially, or keep your dayjob while your building your business (assuming you can, legally). As your business begins to grow, and income begins to happen, then you can begin to spend that to grow or continue to build. For browserless my total monthly costs (assuming I had no customers) was ~$20/month, to put this in perspective. As customers signed-up then I programmatically began to lease/buy more and more infrastructure. This allowed me to get behind the cost problem, and if I had a rough month then I wasn't totally underwater.
I think self-funding also forces a lot of good practices that it's hard to ignore. It really makes you ship something that can make money, forces you to think about scalability and how to scale both your finances and infrastructure, plus gets you in the habit of building small changes quickly. Once you start seeing trends then you can invest in that direction.
This methodology also feeds well into funding when you need it. You'll have customers, already paying you, which means investors can check off numerous boxes. You're also in a much better positions if investors approach you versus the opposite.
JavaScript and Friends Conference Organizer,Dot Net Open Source Days Organizer, Community Meetups Organizer,Auth0 Ambassador, CloudinaryMDE, NativeScript, Vue Enthusiast, Azure Solutions Architect
From your experience how did you secure funding for your business as your operations grew. What are some suggestions you would like to provide for any one starting newly ?
I'll start by saying you should take this with a grain of salt as I'm very biased towards not taking funding. Let me explain.
First off there's a a great network of incubators that can help you -- if you have an idea that really requires funding (if you're building Uber, you're gonna need some capital of course). Businesses that are building marketplaces, wherein you act as the market, will likely require some sort of funding to handle settling of transactions. Otherwise I think taking a good look at at Y-Combinator or Hatch are great places to get some advice and/or funding. It also acts as filter to validate your ideas. If they aren't willing to take you on, then there's something either wrong or that needs to be improved.
OK, with that all out of the way, I deeply feel that more and more founders and businesses can probably go without funding whatsoever. You can either save up for a period of time to keep yourself afloat financially, or keep your dayjob while your building your business (assuming you can, legally). As your business begins to grow, and income begins to happen, then you can begin to spend that to grow or continue to build. For browserless my total monthly costs (assuming I had no customers) was ~$20/month, to put this in perspective. As customers signed-up then I programmatically began to lease/buy more and more infrastructure. This allowed me to get behind the cost problem, and if I had a rough month then I wasn't totally underwater.
I think self-funding also forces a lot of good practices that it's hard to ignore. It really makes you ship something that can make money, forces you to think about scalability and how to scale both your finances and infrastructure, plus gets you in the habit of building small changes quickly. Once you start seeing trends then you can invest in that direction.
This methodology also feeds well into funding when you need it. You'll have customers, already paying you, which means investors can check off numerous boxes. You're also in a much better positions if investors approach you versus the opposite.
Happy to talk more about any of that!
Thanks Joel for sharing your experience and perspective.
Thanks for your advices.