Rubin: Bootstrapped founders have no runway except willingness to push
Slava Rubin · 93 Rejections, One Revolution: How Indiegogo Changed Crowdfunding Forever · Dec 15, 2025 · at 38:18
Slava Rubin (co-founder of Indiegogo) discusses bootstrapping Indiegogo with personal savings through the 2008 financial crash when venture capital was unavailable.
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“The way people think about running out of gas is they actually look at their gas tank and they actually look at the meter go down. So eventually the meter is at zero. So they now have no gas, but if you have no meter, nothing gets to go down. You only get to decide based on how far you want to push the car. So there is no concept of runway. We have no money. We just have our own savings and just trying to decide whether or not we want to keep on investing or going into more debt.”
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