To VC or Not to VC?

Unicorn builder (Mosaic, Netscape) + co-founder of a16z, one of the biggest private venture capital firms. He is a strong advocate for venture capital in the tech industry. “Raising venture capital is the easiest thing a startup founder is ever going to do.”

Reid is a co-founder of Linkedin and a very prominent Sillicon Valley investor currently as partner in Greylock Partners. Reid's rule: "Raise more money than you think you need!"

Fred Wilson has been a venture capitalist rockstar since 1987. He is a partner at Union Square Ventures and also founder f Flatiron Partners. Fred stance: "A VCs most important role is that of a cheerleader... You need a cheerleader in your life. Find one and you will be better off because of it."

Peter is a co-founder of PayPal, Palantir and the 1st investor in Facebook. Also co-founder of the Founders Fund. Author of "Zero to One". His take on the topic: "Giving up 25% of your business is worth it if it enables you to take over your industry."

Jessica Livingston is founding partner of Y Combinator and author.

Dalton Caldwell is Managing Director & Group Partner at YC - the largest startup accelerator. He has run succesfful business like imeem (acquired by MySpace/2009), and us the cofounder of App.net. His stand on to VC or not topic is: "The fact is, the vast majority of businesses don't raise VC and that is often an excellent decision. Many do, and that can be great too!"

Michael Seibel is Managing Director and Group Partner at YC. Past cofounder of Justin.tv - later Twitch.tv (sold to Amazon for $970M) and Socialcam (sold to Autodesk by $60M).

Paul Graham is a programmer, writer and investor. In 2005 he started the most famous startup incubator Y Combinator - they have funded over 3K startups, including AirBnb, Stripe, Reddit... his take on the topic: "Bootstrapping is a proper subset of taking VC. Taking VC lets a company choose its growth rate."

Billionaire and co-founder of MetaLab and Tiny.com - investment firm with over 40 business including Dribbble, Aeropress... Buying, starting, and investing in internet businesses since 2006. On the bootstrap vs. VC topic: "The problem with raising venture is it's binary. In the VC's world, you're either 0 or you're a billion dollar company.""

Aileen Lee is a U.S. venture capital angel investor and co-founder of Cowboy Ventures, founder of AllRaise.org and the person that coined the term "unicorn" in the industry.

Andrew is a founder and CEO of Acquire.com that helps 100s of startups get acquired and has done $500M+ in closed deals. His take: "If you’re building a startup to create wealth don’t raise VC. You don’t need a billion dollars. Selling a bootstrapped company for $1M-$10M is such a more realistic goal and will change your life forever. Unless you need that private jet."

Known as @levelsio, Pieter is arguably the most famous indie hacker in the world who runs PhotoAI.com ($70K/MRR), NomadList ($42K/MRR) and other.. His mantra is "You don't need venture capital to build a startup."

Jason is the Co-Founder/CEO at 37signals, makers of Basecamp ($200M/ARR) and HEY. He has written awesome books on work and productivity, and is the bootstrapping superstar of the indstry. His view for VC is "Fund yourself, Outside money is plan B"

Arvid is a software engineer, entrepreneur, and writer. He bootstrapped FeedbackPanda (SaaS) with his partner Danielle Simpson. They sold the business for a life-changing amount of money in 2019. He is author of the famous "Zero to Sold: How to Start, Run and Sell a Bootstrapped Business".

Rob is 3x author for SaaS & bootstraping + founder of MicroConf and Startups for the Rest of Us. He has 6 exits, the biggest being Drip.com. His take on VC: "IMO ~1% of tech companies should raise VC, and ~10% of tech companies should consider raising non-VC 'indie funding' and the rest should probably bootstrap."

Ben bootstrapped MailChimp to an $12B exit without ever raising a dollar of outside funding. On the topic of VC raising, Ben says: "I'm just really proud to say: I did it my way!"

Builder of 3 companies, out of which 2 bootstrapped unicorns - SmartBear and WPEngine. Jason is experienced entreprenuer. His take on the topic: “Raising money is neither required for 'success' nor a marker of 'success' though it is a marker of 'having more fuel for the fire.'"

Jesse Pujji is a successfull entreprenuer, founder of Ampush (exit at 8-figure sum) and Gateway X. His opinion: "People think I hate VC bc it’s a terrible business model…I don’t. I’m just not comfortable with it personally"

Serial entrepreneur. His take on the topic: "If you're not building rocket ships or curing cancer, you're better off bootstrapping your company. More control and less headaches."

Laura Roeder is the founder and CEO of Paperbell. and MeetEdgar (7K customers). Exited Edgar, social media tool. On the topic on bootstrapping: "The tech world doesn’t celebrate our kind of victory.""