> ...You could just as well bootstrap a tiny, successful internet business selling Wordpress plugins or Shopify themes, believing that ‘startups shouldn’t raise capital’. You would then never need to update your beliefs, because those are perfectly sufficient for a small, independently-run business.
At the scale of a one or two person show the up front costs for building and selling your software are pretty reasonable. This setup rearranges how much cash you need up front to 1. be competitive and 2. win over new business. True this has a cap on it of say... ~1-2M ARR but that's a very reasonable game for a lot of smart people to be playing. I didn't read the original article he's arguing against, but if that's the style business they are discussing then the "don't raise" argument holds up. Frankly given the original article's conclusion of "don't raise money" I suspect they weren't focusing a post-IPO cable business...
At the scale of a one or two person show the up front costs for building and selling your software are pretty reasonable. This setup rearranges how much cash you need up front to 1. be competitive and 2. win over new business. True this has a cap on it of say... ~1-2M ARR but that's a very reasonable game for a lot of smart people to be playing. I didn't read the original article he's arguing against, but if that's the style business they are discussing then the "don't raise" argument holds up. Frankly given the original article's conclusion of "don't raise money" I suspect they weren't focusing a post-IPO cable business...