Ask HN: Founders that raised funding and shutdown, did you raise again? Curious to know the number of repeat founders here who shutdown and raised again, or chose not to raise the second time. I bootstrapped, raised, shutdown, went solo again, thinking about next steps. Ultimately funding and the VC market is a tool but it comes with a lot of baggage. Thoughts? |
Anecdotally, I feel like the second-time founders see VC as a very specific tool and many prefer not to raise... They'd rather bootstrap and scale more slowly, retaining control, freedom, and flexibility. Granted, a lot of founders also have bad experiences with VCs.
I think your framing VC as a tool is the right one. Not sure if first-time founders are still like this, but ~15 years ago, it seemed like raising VC funding was validation in and of itself and you were perceived as successful due to the raise. The second-time folks know this is neither validation of your product nor is it any sort of guarantee of success... If you need to raise lots of money to capture a speculative market or build something that won't see revenue for a while, VC is great. If you want to build a decent business that grows 20% to 30% per year and compounds over decades, then maybe it's not for you.
Finally, VC is a broad category. Raising money from former founders or from strategic VCs who can legitimately mentor you is very different than getting a check from a fund that makes 100s of investments per year and simply manages you as an arms length portfolio entry.