Lemkin: Bootstrapped SaaS startups risk falling behind venture-backed rivals
Jason Lemkin · DEBATE: State of Seed Investing w/ Jason Lemkin, Sam Lessin, Frank Rotman & Harry Stebbings | E1047 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings · Aug 11, 2023 · at 32:24
Jason Lemkin, founder of SaaStr, pushes back on Sam Lessin's advocacy for bootstrapping, arguing that uncapitalized software companies cannot survive competition from well-funded rivals.
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“Maybe it's not even until after five or ten million where if you don't have capital, you can't all be Atlassian or Qualtrics. Or, and they fall behind competitively. And I think that's the trap of the fallacy of the lifestyle-esque business, right? Where media businesses are different. The information can be wildly can be more compelling today than before, but I don't know about a twenty million dollar tip, you know, a payroll company that raised nothing when rippling and gusto and everyone is out there, maybe, and deal, maybe, but I find that it's, we could trick founders into a path that doesn't exist.”
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