Should I raise VC???

To raise VC or to bootstrap, that is the question.

Or rather, that was the question.

Within 10 min of tweeting that I quit my job to go full-time on Memelord Technologies, VCs hit my DMs. Boom, boom, DM after DM. I felt like a hot girl at a party. And you know what, I’m not afraid to admit it—I liked the attention.

3 years ago, this wouldn’t have been possible for me. I knew no one. I’m a dropout memelord, but because I built an audience and a reputation, VCs were interested in chatting and potentially funding my biz. I was like the fat girl who lost weight and got hot so you’re goddamn right I took the calls with some VCs! (Don’t worry I didn’t sleep with any of them, I’m not that easy).

“Wait wait wait, why the hell would VCs be interested in a meme biz???”

Well, while a meme business may sound silly, silly businesses can mean serious money. Giphy sold for $400M. KnowYourMeme sold for 8 figures and gets 3M pageviews/mo. Meme page empire FuckJerry makes 8 figures per year.

Memes make millions, remember?

And when I told them the goal wasn’t just to be a meme editor, but to be the go-to meme marketing software, they really got it. Canva is worth $26B. Photoshop has 33M users. Every brand is moving toward meme marketing from Porsche to Sony and yet there’s no software exclusively for meme marketing—so even if I just capture a tiny % of the total market, there’s a lot of money there. Goodbye Canva, hello memelord.tech.

Plus while everyone loves to shit on VCs, I have nothing against VCs. I’ve become friends with a ton of VCs and had awesome ones like Sasha Kaletsky and Eric Bahn on my podcast. I’m even doing a bit of investing myself and can see myself launching a fund one day. As a whole, I find VCs are deeply curious, ambitious, internet-native weirdos like me. Plus raising capital for new ideas is crucial to maintain innovation within Silicon Valley and beyond. So I was happy to chat with them.

So here I am 2 Red Bulls deep and on my first call with a big famous fund.

“How much do you need?” they ask.

It’s a weird surreal question to be asked.

“How much money do you need?” Uhhhh, all of it please. I’ll just take the whole empanada brother, all dem billions. Tbh, I wasn’t expecting this question, so I told them the standard seed round size of $2-3 million for hiring devs and marketing and they said “ok that sounds reasonable”. WHAT. Ok. I talked to a couple more firms and they agreed sounds reasonable enough. At this point, I was like holy shit am I raising VC?

So I did what any 26-year-old dude does and called his mom—along with a bunch of startup friends. Let me introduce you to some of the homies here all under fictitious names and share some of the deep wisdom they channeled:

• Billy (bootstrapped SaaS founder making $125k/month): DON’T FUCKING DO IT. You wanna become a VC’s bitch??? You’re profitable, why do you need them? Bootstrap, use your savings, reinvest your profits, and repeat. Don’t take the money brooooooo. We left corporate so we don’t need to be anyone’s bitch.

• Steve (agency owner): It would be pretty cool to be the guy who wrote Memes Make Millions and then raise millions for a meme company. Also, you’d be able to get a cool office and hire a team to film content and shit. Think about how much more cool stuff you can do with a couple million in your bank account.

• Chris (exited founder for high 8 digits): You’re 3 months into running this business as a side project. Why raise money before you even know what this business could be? You should collect more data then decide.

• Dustin (VC-backed SaaS founder): Raising a few million won’t realistically change anything in a negative way. You’ll only give up 7-10% of your company so who cares, they can’t actually tell you what to do. Pick good VCs and they won’t bother you or be on your ass. You’ll just have more money to try stuff. Raising capital is how the biggest businesses are created.

• Jasper (VC-backed SaaS founder): All I’m saying is if I was starting my business again, I wouldn’t be raising money. Also if you’re raising money, you should read Ryan Breslow’s book Fundraising. (me: “Wait the Ryan Breslow from that scam company Bolt?” Jasper: “Yes, he’s a complete fraud, but it’s a good book. Lot of actionable advice.” me: “Uh ok bruh”)

• Mom (mom): You should wait. You just started this business and you have no idea how big it could be. Once you raise money, you’re on that cycle. Patience. Be patient. Wait 6 months then think about it, ok sweetie?

So for about a week, I had all this crap floating in my head. Plus a ton more thoughts.

It was like an angel and devil talking on my shoulders.

😇 Do I want to be on the insane VC-driven growth cycle to try to build a unicorn? Do I need to be a billionaire or am I happy with a “lifestyle business” and try to make $3-10M/year in revenue and live good? Sounds like a pretty good lifestyle to me.

👹 Ooooo but imagine making billions…. you could buy a boat. You could buy 2 boats.

😇 But VCs want you to sell your business or IPO. My exit plan for Memelord Technologies is death, and there ain’t no way my goofy fucking ass is becoming CEO of a public company. IMAGINE THAT HAPPENING.

👹 You could def be a public CEO, bro, you look good in a suit.

😇 Am I ready to give up all side projects and consulting? I LOVE SIDE PROJECTS. VCs don’t lol. VC would not like me doing standup comedy or taking consulting calls or writing screenplays or new SaaS or whatever weird side projects I want to work on.

👹 Ooooo but imagine 7 digits in your bank account!!!!

😇 Products are getting easier and easier to build with AI and no-code. Getting attention on your products is harder than ever. Why am I raising money when distribution is the hardest part and I can do that better than anyone????

👹 Ooooo but imagine how many fancy cracked Waterloo engineers you can hire.

😇 Oh also, am I raising money for status or do I actually need the money? Many VC-backed businesses would ironically last longer and be more successful if they never raised venture money. Raising money when you don’t need money is a recipe for disaster. It’s not like I’m building hardware with high capital costs or training giant AI models. I looked at my MRR, I looked at my savings, I looked at what I’m spending on the business, I did some napkin moth, I thought about what I’d actually use the money for (uhh maybe cool t-shirts???), and I realized yeah $2-3M would be nice and all but I don’t actually need the money. If I took the money, it’d be nice to have for growth experiments, but do I need it? Probably not.

👹 Ooooo but imagine $3M in your bank account bruhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!

My brain was getting frazzled. I wasn’t sleeping much.

Angels and devils be yapping harder than my wife when she got a story to tell. Money is tempting. But as per usual, my Mom was right.

I decided to be patient.

I put my head down, drank Red Bull, and grinded. I didn’t get distracted taking more VC calls. In fact, I rejected their calls outright. I shipped new features. I took user feedback and executed on it. I pushed harder on growth. And I doubled my MRR!

I think my decision is a trend we’re going to see more and more.

Now that software is easier to build than ever, creators and marketers like me are going to be launching bootstrapped SaaS more and more. Yes, there will always be a place for VC for new crazy capital-intensive ideas, but for most SaaS, VC just isn’t necessary anymore (this is why so much of VC is getting obsessed with hardware and defense-tech, and if the VCs don’t even feel like VC is necessary for SaaS, you shouldn’t either!)

Be honest with yourself.

Do you need the VC money or do you want the status? Have you done everything you can without the VCs and still need it? And lastly, do you really need to be a billionaire?

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Thanks for reading nerds.

Create some cool shit this week.

Jason “The Memelord” Levin

Founder of Memelord Technologies, Author of Memes Make Millions

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