Andy Cockburn, CEO of Mention Me, on how technology entrepreneurs can bootstrap their way to scale.
All too often entrepreneurs mark their success by how many funding rounds they’ve been through. The badge of honour at meetups and conferences is whether you’re at Seed, Series A or Series B. This is an entirely unhelpful way for entrepreneurs to judge success.
My co-founder and I were very aware of the risk of this. We actively avoided raising any money until we had product market fit and we’ve always fixated on growing the business out of cash flow. We knew that raising early would be expensive – in terms of equity – and would be a huge distraction from doing what we should be doing. We’ve now grown to a profitable team of 45 people in five years and we’re looking to add another 30 people this year. We’re growing rapidly and all of that growth is out of cashflow....