Ask HN: How did you finance your start-up?

7 points by aswin8728 12 years ago | 4 comments

Did you use your own money? Did you find an angel investor? If so, where did you look?

Just wanted to get a feel for how people reached their fiscal goal before I dive into trying to fund my own projects.

edwardliu 12 years ago |

With the money I saved up on my first job. I'm usually quite Lean. I found a co-founder who owned a developer team. I gave him a small percentage and some "salary" to get it started.

Also, I'd never ask for money until my startup already has traction.

muratmutlu 12 years ago |

I hooked up with 2 other co-founders friends that i use to work with.

We worked in our spare-time to get out a really early beta, once we had that and some users I started asking around and networking to find investors.

Took around 3-4 weeks and dozens of meetings to find the right one. Almost took the first offer we got which was a quarter of what we settled for.

Although I used Angel List and F6S, in the end it was a personal intro from a old freelance client that got us the money

bjoerns 12 years ago |

I second edwardliu's comment. did the same thing, putting my own money where my mouth is. Whether you take on investor money obviously depends on many, many things but in my view, but bootstrapping it for as long as you can helps you focus on what matters most when you run a business: revenues. build a product that solves a real problem, get traction and make money.

davidsmith8900 12 years ago |

- I pretty saved up money from my first job.