- Cyber Patterns by Jason Levin
- Posts
- Should I raise VC???
Should I raise VC???
I got demons bruh đš
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, Iâm not afraid to admit itâI liked the attention.
3 years ago, this wouldnât have been possible for me. I knew no one. Iâm 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 youâre goddamn right I took the calls with some VCs! (Donât worry I didnât sleep with any of them, Iâm not that easy).
âWait wait wait, why the hell would VCs be interested in a meme biz???â
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 wasnât 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 thereâs no software exclusively for meme marketingâso even if I just capture a tiny % of the total market, thereâs a lot of money there. Goodbye Canva, hello memelord.tech.
canva can't hang
â Jason Levin (@iamjasonlevin)
2:14 PM ⢠Oct 7, 2024
Plus while everyone loves to shit on VCs, I have nothing against VCs. Iâve become friends with a ton of VCs and had awesome ones like Sasha Kaletsky and Eric Bahn on my podcast. Iâm 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.
âHow much do you need?â they ask.
me Red Bulled up
Itâs a weird surreal question to be asked.
âHow much money do you need?â Uhhhh, all of it please. Iâll just take the whole empanada brother, all dem billions. Tbh, I wasnât expecting this question, so I told them the standard seed round size of $2-3 million for hiring devs and marketing and they said âok that sounds reasonableâ. 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 momâalong 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): DONâT FUCKING DO IT. You wanna become a VCâs bitch??? Youâre profitable, why do you need them? Bootstrap, use your savings, reinvest your profits, and repeat. Donât take the money brooooooo. We left corporate so we donât need to be anyoneâs 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, youâd 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): Youâre 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 wonât realistically change anything in a negative way. Youâll only give up 7-10% of your company so who cares, they canât actually tell you what to do. Pick good VCs and they wonât bother you or be on your ass. Youâll just have more money to try stuff. Raising capital is how the biggest businesses are created.
Jasper (VC-backed SaaS founder): All Iâm saying is if I was starting my business again, I wouldnât be raising money. Also if youâre raising money, you should read Ryan Breslowâs book Fundraising. (me: âWait the Ryan Breslow from that scam company Bolt?â Jasper: âYes, heâs a complete fraud, but itâs a good book. Lot of actionable advice.â me: âUh ok bruhâ)
Mom (mom): You should wait. You just started this business and you have no idea how big it could be. Once you raise money, youâre 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.
I'm fighting demons b ruh (VCs in my DMs trying to invest in my company I don't want to be VC-backed)
â Jason Levin (@iamjasonlevin)
2:45 PM ⢠Oct 26, 2024
đ 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 âlifestyle businessâ and try to make $3-10M/year in revenue and live good? Sounds like a pretty good lifestyle to me.
when the lifestyle biz is making more than VC-backed biz
đš Ooooo but imagine making billionsâŚ. you could buy a boat. You could buy 2 boats.
đ But VCs want you to sell your business or IPO. My exit plan for Memelord Technologies is death, and there ainât no way my goofy fucking ass is becoming CEO of a public company. IMAGINE THAT HAPPENING.
Invest in Warby Memelordy now before itâs too late
đš You could def be a public CEO, bro, you look good in a suit.
đ Am I ready to give up all side projects and consulting? I LOVE SIDE PROJECTS. VCs donât 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.
Iâm not getting rich to get side hoes
Iâm getting rich to have more time and capital to work on side projects
Side projects > side hoes
â Jason Levin (@iamjasonlevin)
8:30 PM ⢠Oct 12, 2024
đš Ooooo but imagine 7 digits in your bank account!!!!
đ 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????
đš Ooooo but imagine how many fancy cracked Waterloo engineers you can hire.
đ 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 donât need money is a recipe for disaster. Itâs not like Iâm 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 Iâm spending on the business, I did some napkin moth, I thought about what Iâd actually use the money for (uhh maybe cool t-shirts???), and I realized yeah $2-3M would be nice and all but I donât actually need the money. If I took the money, itâd be nice to have for growth experiments, but do I need it? Probably not.
đš Ooooo but imagine $3M in your bank account bruhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!
My brain was getting frazzled. I wasnât 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 didnât 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 weâre 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 isnât necessary anymore (this is why so much of VC is getting obsessed with hardware and defense-tech, and if the VCs donât even feel like VC is necessary for SaaS, you shouldnât 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?
Took a look in the mirror and realized $50M prob enough x.com/i/web/status/1âŚ
â Jason Levin (@iamjasonlevin)
1:20 AM ⢠Oct 5, 2024
To get my posts in your inbox every Sunday, subscribe here:
Podcasts + Videos
Wanna master Reddit for startup growth? I talked to Kevin Xu, a r/WallStBets multi-millionaire and startup founder who is the king of Reddit.
Tech Memes of the Week
The venture capital tool kit
â Jack Kuveke (@jackkuveke)
5:55 PM ⢠Oct 21, 2024
"Wait so you can just do things?"
"Yes, Joe. This is America. You can just do things. Anyone can just do things."
â Jason Levin (@iamjasonlevin)
1:53 PM ⢠Oct 26, 2024
Sir, Stripe has informed me the 2nd customer of the day upgraded from monthly to annual.
â Jason Levin (@iamjasonlevin)
12:25 AM ⢠Oct 24, 2024
My side project design process
â Shane Levine (@theShaneLevine)
4:09 PM ⢠Oct 23, 2024
Meme creation made legendary
Subscribe to memelord.tech itâs literally the best $6.90 youâll spend today
â piet (@piet_dev)
2:49 PM ⢠Oct 25, 2024
my podcast listeners realizing my meme marketing philosophy makes sense
â Jason Levin (@iamjasonlevin)
8:27 PM ⢠Oct 23, 2024
Thanks for reading nerds.
Create some cool shit this week.
Jason âThe Memelordâ Levin
Founder of Memelord Technologies, Author of Memes Make Millions
Need crazy marketing ideas? Book a call here.