Are you VC-funded? No, we're profitable

[kylecazar]

"Now the same question seems to be coming from a position of customers trying to determine how much of a risk they're willing tolerate when doing business with VC-funded companies."

To be fair, this was one customer's question, not necessarily a trend.

The merits of taking VC are debatable. But I don't think we're at a point where potential customers broadly are skeptical of a funded startup. If nothing else, it means someone, somewhere has vetted you and thinks you can deliver.

[Yoric]

As a nuance: the VC thinks you can deliver to them. It's not necessarily the same thing as delivering to your clients.

[penguin_booze]

There are merits, but one way to look at VC is as a predatory lending firm.

[light_triad]

It's a bit of a non sequitur: having a profitable business is ideal but if a startup can grow fast with VC money it can be acquired for 40x (Wiz) - 1000x (WhatsApp) revenue even if not profitable

[epolanski]

Why does it always have to be about maximizing exits at all costs?

There's people that simply enjoy their company and working in it, they only luck to sell when they are old and there are no great heirs to the business.

And that's true for billion dollar companies too.

[altairprime]

A startup that doesn’t care about making money is a startup that will ignore negative customer feedback if addressing the concerns raised would slow the unicorn’s growing phase. If you’re a stable business, that’s the sort of firm you definitely do not want to hire for key services; the VC involvement is too high an instability to permit. (Advertising is not a key service.)

[nothercastle]

Can but most will die trying. The customer will get screwed either way. The VC sees growth or die, the customer gets die or suck. Loose lose for the customer

[taneq]

I’d think ‘profitable but investing revenue in growth’ Is very different from ‘increasing revenue purchased with investor money’.

Being profitable means you’re not beholden to new investors. If your goal is to run a company rather than race for an exit, this lets you make much longer term strategic decisions.

[pavel_lishin]

> if a startup can grow fast with VC money it can be acquired for 40x (Wiz) - 1000x (WhatsApp) revenue even if not profitable

How does that help me as a potential user?

[dehrmann]

Maybe I'm just saying what VC wants me to say, but if it's the sort of business a VC would invest in, you need to worry about a competitor blitzscaling over you.

[mmaunder]

VCs are diversified. Founders are not. Their math checks. Yours does not.

[MortyWaves]

I’m expecting this post to vanish from the home page any time now

[nisten69]

Gotta love the feeling of having infinite runway.

[jascination]

It's a cute quote, but it seems about 5 years out of date. There was a golden period for a while there that indie hackers and self-funded devs could create a useful product and grow it themselves and could 'beat' VCs.

But now you can create some AI generated slop in a day that used to take months. Being an indie hacker used to be a sort of badge of honour, now it's where everyone starts.

I think the VC-backed companies who have budgets to do actual marketing, actual sales, actual outreach beyond "I have a good following on X, I'm gonna sell them stuff" will win in the end.

As a customer, for me I don't care whether the company is profitable, I care about whether it works, whether it's in my budget, whether the company will be around in 2 years regardless of if the founder loses their passion for it.

[Aurornis]

I followed a lot of indie hackers and “build in public” accounts on Twitter over the years.

Most of them struggled for a while and then pivoted into some variation of being an influencer: Selling courses, selling services to other indie hackers, or just Tweeting trend-following engagement bait 50 times a day and then bragging about the size of their X payout checks.

Everyone talks about the levels.io guy as the epitome of indie hacking, but many don’t realize (or don’t want to admit) that his projects are making that amount of money because of his Twitter following. His current project is a simple vibe-coded game that sells in-game advertising, and the advertisers are paying largely for the novelty and to get in on the conversation. Nothing about that revenue model could be replicated by anyone with such a large Twitter following. Fantastic for him, of course, but it’s so far removed from what people imagine when they talk about being an indie hacker that it’s just not a relevant example of the space. Yet he continues to be held up as an example of what indie hackers can attain.

I think there’s space for individual entrepreneurs, app creators, and business operators. I just don’t see it coming from the self-described “indie hacker” space at this point because indie hacking has turned into a marketing and self-promotion meta game. The real independent devs are operating out of sight at this point.

[nullderef]

I've recently started an indie hacker journey and cannot emphasize how much work it takes. It's incredibly hard to develop the technical side, listen to feedback to improve the product/UX, do SEO, viral marketing, and more.

Hiring more people seems necessary to stay sane -- at least for my project. But you need money for that, which you won't have for a long time. Even tools for all these aspects (Claude, Revid.ai, ahrefs, etc) stack up in subscription costs.

Maybe this is just because I'm getting started, though.

[mikigraf]

100%. We tried to compete with a few VC-funded startups and they all have been able to outgrow us while we struggled to get enough money for SOC2.

[nozzlegear]

I tend to be wary of AI slop products as well, but I don't think indie developers are particularly more prone to creating AI slop than VC-backed devs. It seems to me that AI has lowered the barrier to entry for creating slop products for indie devs. On the other end of the spectrum, the number of VC-backed SaaS products out there that haven't completely pivoted to becoming some kind of AI wrapper is approximately zero.

Regarding the topic at hand, I'm more likely to purchase something that's not VC-backed, and does not mention AI at all these days.

[bigstrat2003]

> But now you can create some AI generated slop in a day that used to take months.

Yeah, but it won't work. Not a very good look if you're trying to grow your business.

[guywithahat]

It’s cool seeing a Houston startup too; I feel like the only ones I’ve ever seen have been self-funded

[CyberMacGyver]

Where do people find good Indie hacking solopreneur support ?

[paxys]

VC-funded startups go out of business.

Bootstrapped startups go out of business.

While there is a large gap in the two models in terms of finances, operations and everything else, trying to argue that customers should pick your company purely because you haven't raised money shows that you are either deliberately being insincere or know nothing about the industry, neither of which are great selling points.

If you want to compete, do it on the basis of features and value.

[cthor]

It's a signal whether you like it or not. Saying "well shucks anything could go out of business" is meaningless. What partners and customers want to know is the liklihood of that happening. Moreover, going out of business isn't the only risk to consider but also pivoting into another business entirely.

[recursive]

As a customer, I might be interested to know if a vendor can continue to exist if they achieve only moderate success.

[sethaurus]

VC-funded startups go out of business because they are unable to grow fast enough.

Bootstrapped startups go out of business because they are not profitable.

As a customer, knowing that a vendor is already profitable and sustainable is a big green light.