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Ask HN: Anyone raised money and wish you didn't?

31 pointstrueneverland13y ago8 comments

I am curious if anyone raised capital and wish they didn't. Not because they got bad investors, but particularly because of the difference in running a self funded company (complete control) vs raising (and potentially having expectations, rules, etc...). Could you please share your experience specific to why not raising would or wouldn't have been better, particularly if you didn't need the funds?

I know how some say funds help you grow faster, or raising helps you "hire" an investor you otherwise couldn't hire. I'm not really interested in those factors. More so on the differences of dynamics independent of those.

8 comments

6 comments · 3 top-level

swift10713y ago· 2 in thread

I have a corollary to this question, via this survey on VCs trying to identify which ones people would go back to or would want their investment.

https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/hackernews

lsc13y ago

I am amused. "which university did you attend" is a required question.

swift10713y ago

i wanted to use that along with which tech companies you know as a way to define people that are "tech savvy". So my crude method was to take top compsci/eng schools and use a gradient of different technology startups. make sense? happy to take suggestions.

livestyle13y ago· 1 in thread

Yes we raised over $500k from angels at my last startup and it was the worst decision we ever made. Instead of letting us build a business..we were forced to scale without product market fit.

livestyle13y ago

An example of this is when we were about 2 years into things and we really noticed that our b2b customers for our ecommerce buying club made up close 70% of monthly rev. But we had postioned ourselves as a b2c "wholesale club"..

I fought for us to forget about consumers and focus on our b2b customers. I was vetoed due in no small part to the fact that our investors didnt invest in a b2b company.

We cratered 8 months later. Pivoting was not as fashionable as it is now (2010)

Hope this helps.

paulsutter13y ago

If you have any doubts that raising money is a good idea, you shouldn't raise money. In fact there's a good chance you won't.

There's no need to overanalyze it or weigh the pitfalls. Only raise money if you're already certain it's the right choice. If you're still asking "but how do I know?", you shouldn't raise money.

Just keep growing your customer ramp. You'll know when the time is right.

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