As an entrepreneur, I’m sure you’ve thought about your business’s funding more than once. The decision to build a business with the funds you scrape together on your own, versus soliciting capital from outside sources can have a huge impact – in ways you might not even imagine.
The founding team at Infusionsoft decided to take the arduous, and sometimes gut-wrenching, path of building a software company on our own for more than five years before raising venture capital – and there were major consequences.
I wrote an article for VentureBeat’s Entrepreneur Corner, to share 10 lessons we’ve learned. VentureBeat started out as a news blog by a technology reporter in Silicon Valley and after it received venture funding, the site hired more great reporters and expanded to cover a lot more topics, including entrepreneurship.
Here’s a taste from the article to get you started:
3. You’ll retain control of your business
2. You’ll learn to sell
1. You’ll listen to your customers
You can read the detail on all 10 lessons on Venturebeat’s Website (with nitty gitty examples) here.
As I said in the conclusion of the VentureBeat article, I’m sure I’ve missed some lessons. What have you learned from bootstrapping? And when do you think it’s time to move from the bootstrapping game to the OPM (“Other People’s Money”) game? Please chime in!
The founders of Infusionsoft are die hard Entrepreneurs and did everything they had to do to make a success of their company from which we all benefit. The article at VenturBeat is very informative.
The founders of Infusionsoft are die hard Entrepreneurs and did everything they had to do to make a success of their company from which we all benefit. The article at VenturBeat is very informative.