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I Hit $1M ARR in 117 Days. Bootstrapped to $10M. Here's My Playbook | Chatbase, Yasser Elsaid

EO34:13Added Aug 31, 2026

Yasser Elsaid, founder of Chatbase, bootstrapped to $10M ARR with no funding. We asked him 15 questions to break down the exact playbook.*Brought to you by:*...

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Contributed by 刘嘉琪

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  1. Intro

  2. 00:00We started now close to 3 years ago. I launched I think at like 1:00 p.m. I got
  3. 00:05my first customer 30 minutes after that. I think 10 minutes after I got the second person, maybe an hour after I got
  4. 00:10the third person. At this moment, I knew that I need to stop everything else I'm doing in life. We did 1 million ARR in
  5. 00:18exactly 117 days. We've been growing ever since uh bootstrapped without any
  6. 00:23external funding. It's just me and the team. That's it. My opinion is that you'll see an explosion of more and more
  7. 00:29bootstrapped companies doing insane numbers of revenue that were not possible before.
  8. 00:35Hi, my name is Yaser. I'm the founder of Chadbase. Chadbase is a platform for doing customerf facing AI agents
  9. 00:42specifically for customer support and sales. So, we're building an AI agent that is a brand ambassador and gives
  10. 00:48that conversational experience to every customer. We just bootstrapped Chatbase to $10 million in error. And now I'm
  11. 00:54going to share the exact playbook that got us here.

  12. Why Bootstrap?

  13. 01:03Why did you bootstrap? I think there is many advantages and disadvantages of bootstrapping. The
  14. 01:09biggest advantage is that you have control. So you only listen to your customers and the team and that's it. Uh
  15. 01:17and I think this gives you a lot of freedom in building exactly what you want to build. And I think the other
  16. 01:23reason is the definition of success changes as soon as you raise. When you're bootstrapping like a successful
  17. 01:30outcome is like 50 millionaire or 100 millionaire or even 200 which I think is
  18. 01:35very possible for us. But I think raising changes that equation a lot. What I would consider a success might be
  19. 01:42even harder now to achieve as soon as you sign a term sheet. Getting a successful outcome for me, for the team
  20. 01:49and for the customer I think is a lot more likely in this path. And I think a lot of companies and founders are seeing
  21. 01:57that. Now you see a lot of bootstrap founders especially now with all the AI tools that you have now which you know
  22. 02:04help you with coding, help you with customer support, help you with marketing, you don't need as big of a
  23. 02:09team as you used to. So I think this era is the era of the smaller companies maybe like 10 to 50 people with a lot
  24. 02:16higher revenue per employee and when you have that uh equation bootstrapping
  25. 02:22becomes a lot more feasible. I think it's also more fun to to have control. So this is why I decided to to keep the
  26. 02:28company bootstrapped. What's the common mistake bootstrap founders make? When you operate as a bootstrap company,

  27. The Common Mistake Bootstrap Founders Make

  28. 02:34you're more focusing on profitability. you're more focusing on everything you do is ROI positive. You're making sure
  29. 02:41you have like money in the bank. You're making sure to, you know, be as efficient as possible. The most common mistake bootstrap founders make is
  30. 02:49having the mindset of a bootstrap founder. That means being extremely, you know, like cost efficient with
  31. 02:55everything. Always trying to make sure you're ROI positive, being risk averse.
  32. 03:00But if you're like me and you want to build something huge and you want to have as much impact, hire people, see
  33. 03:08revenue go up, see number of customers go up, then the biggest mistake is not
  34. 03:13being aggressive enough. It makes sense to have that mindset early on. But I think you should very quickly stop
  35. 03:19having that you like as soon as you have some revenue you can rely on. You have to take risks. You have to like do
  36. 03:25experiments that might not be ROI positive. You have to you have to hire people that you think are expensive
  37. 03:30because they're good. You shouldn't delay that. This is honestly the biggest thing is is having a mindset of a boost
  38. 03:36company. And this is what we stopped doing and we've seen a lot of revenue growth since we started acting that way.

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  47. 04:39Why did you become a builder? I started university in Canada studying

  48. Why Become a Builder?

  49. 04:45computer science. You know, everyone is affected by their environment. The environment around me, everyone
  50. 04:50basically had the same goal actually like in most of universities in Canada, especially in computer science and
  51. 04:56engineering, and that's getting, you know, a fang internship uh in California. It's called Cali or Bust. I
  52. 05:02just started optimizing my work or my the the effort I'm putting towards
  53. 05:09getting that fang internship. I got it. I did an internship at Tesla. I did
  54. 05:14another one at Facebook. Everything is very new, so it's very exciting. But I think very quickly I did realize that
  55. 05:21maybe this is not the environment for me. The reason was like it just felt too, you know, like too safe, too
  56. 05:27structured. It's it's mostly optimizing for like the highest chance or like the
  57. 05:33highest likelihood of making like above $200,000 a year, which which is a fine
  58. 05:38goal. I think for me like I just was very inspired by people who are building companies and I think it's such a
  59. 05:44privilege to have the freedom you know like to wake up and decide hey like this
  60. 05:49is what I want to build I have this vision and I want to bring it to life. So while I was doing these internships, I very soon realized that maybe maybe
  61. 05:56this is not it. And I just saw if I continue in this path, what will my life look like in 5 years, 10 years? And it's
  62. 06:06honestly it looks exactly the same. Like you know the E3D engineer versus the E6 engineer, you know, that person has, you
  63. 06:13know, like a higher salary. They have more status within the company. I think this is this is of course like an
  64. 06:19amazing life and a lot of people would would want that. But I just wanted this
  65. 06:24ability to create things. When I thought of that, I just looked at, you know, what people are doing out there and I
  66. 06:31saw this community of indie hackers, especially on on Twitter. So people like
  67. 06:37Peter Levels or or Mark Lou, they have an idea and they sit down and build it and then they share it with the world.
  68. 06:43This gives them a lot of purpose and a lot of meaning. Like you imagine like you have an idea, you just like bring it
  69. 06:49into existence and then you also have people validate that by giving you money because this thing that you built is
  70. 06:56providing them value. When I did those things, it gave me a lot more skills
  71. 07:02that is actually needed when it came time to build chatbase. I don't think I used any of the things that I learned at
  72. 07:09those bigger companies, but I used a lot of the things that I learned when building those those smaller projects.
  73. 07:16And I think you'll see that even the most impressive founders, you'll see they always have like projects that they
  74. 07:21were building, some of them like very small oneperson projects, some of them bigger, but you always see like some
  75. 07:26hint that they started with an idea and they wanted to
  76. 07:32bring it to the world. And then by doing that over and over again, one they acquire the skill, two they acquire the
  77. 07:39confidence and then three they come up with better ideas for better products. And that's exactly what happened with
  78. 07:45me. You learn how to build a company by building a company. I think any skill
  79. 07:51that you learn at a big company is mostly irrelevant because it's just like
  80. 07:56a completely different dynamic, completely different goals, completely different kinds of people you're working with. If you know the goal is to like
  81. 08:02build this specific company, like the only way to get to that goal faster, is to just start. In building a company,
  82. 08:10especially early on, especially when you're solo, the outcome is like 100%
  83. 08:16correlated by the input you put in. You control all the inputs and all the output is a result of all of those
  84. 08:22inputs that you had control over. I think it's very apparent in when you're doing sports especially individual
  85. 08:28sports because you're responsible for you know your training your equipment your coaching your nutrition everything
  86. 08:36and your outcome is solely based on your input and your training you win because
  87. 08:42you won and you lose because you lost. Taking that mindset to building companies I think is is very beneficial.
  88. 08:49Knowing that you control your destiny gives you comfort. I knew I was smart enough to do this. I knew I had a lot of
  89. 08:55energy. I I had the conviction. So, it didn't make sense to me to not tie that
  90. 09:02skill and that energy to the outcome. I think for for anyone that has a similar
  91. 09:07mindset, starting a company is is a no-brainer. How did Chatbace start?

  92. How Chatbase Started

  93. 09:12When I was building these other projects, some of them were using AI because this was like very early on in
  94. 09:19the start of the AI wave before Chad GPT was launched. So I was building things
  95. 09:25and when you're building things you see other people building things and you see some limitations in what you're building
  96. 09:32and you see some new ideas and new opportunities. So while building other
  97. 09:37things it became obvious to me that oh there is this one idea that it doesn't
  98. 09:43seem to me that anyone is doing but it was obvious to me that this is extremely valuable. This felt to me that this is
  99. 09:50if I don't do this now, someone else will because to me it was such an obvious idea. The idea basically was you
  100. 09:57have these powerful models, language models that are trained on all this general data, but they don't have
  101. 10:03specific data to a specific person or company or customer or like my my first
  102. 10:09example was a book. So the very first version of chatbase was uploading a textbook or uploading a book and then
  103. 10:15and then just chatting with it. I found that idea because I was doing other projects in the space and when you do
  104. 10:21that you see like the gaps you see the opportunities and then you come up with with new ideas. So I I I stopped going
  105. 10:29to class. This was in 2022 so before even Chad GPT was launched not
  106. 10:34mainstream like it is now and maybe in some circles they're talking about AI but of course not anywhere close to the
  107. 10:41same extent as it is now. It was just like hey we have this model called GPT3 and people are doing some interesting
  108. 10:47things with it. There's a few maybe companies that are using it. So back then I think a lot of people had like
  109. 10:53saw the models saw what they are now and thought of ideas of companies or
  110. 10:59products they can build on top of those AIs but based on the current capability.
  111. 11:05Now everyone knows you know like if you're building an AI you're building for the next model and the next model so
  112. 11:11that every time the model improves your product improves but I think that mindset was not what everyone was
  113. 11:17thinking back then when I saw this model like it has of course it was not not very powerful a lot of use cases were
  114. 11:24not very good but you can like hack in just enough to make it usable at least
  115. 11:30to do a demo at least to make it like useful for some customers and some use cases. To me, it was
  116. 11:37obvious that these models will improve. I didn't know how, I didn't know when, but if this model improves and I built
  117. 11:44the harness around it that makes it able to do like these these cool new things,
  118. 11:49then I'm winning and then my customers are also winning. I launched 1 p.m. I got my first
  119. 11:57customer 30 minutes after that in just, you know, like a pricing page on the website. I put out a tweet. I put a link
  120. 12:05and then I saw my first Stripe notification. I think yeah, I think that's such a special moment. You know,
  121. 12:11you built something from scratch and someone was willing to bet that this is
  122. 12:17valuable to them that they take out their card and spend money on it. I think 10 minutes after I got the second
  123. 12:22person, maybe an hour after I got the third person, at this moment I knew that I need to stop everything else I'm doing
  124. 12:29in life because I it was very obvious to me that this is this is this is a special moment. and this is a special
  125. 12:34opportunity. A lot of people don't have this opportunity and I just need to make
  126. 12:39sure that I take advantage of being in such a good position. So I stopped, you know, going to class. I stopped hanging
  127. 12:46out with friends. My main focus was was building. I think that was the right move.

  128. How to Hit $1M ARR

  129. 12:52How did you hit a million in ARR? I didn't spend any money on marketing in the first 3 months because I didn't have
  130. 12:58money to spend on marketing. I like all the money uh that I has to saved up like personally even from like working and on
  131. 13:06and on the internships was mainly used to serve the models and then once I had enough revenue to cover the cost of the
  132. 13:12models then it started to become profitable and it became profitable ever since but to start like there was no
  133. 13:19marketing it was just building in public launching in subreddits launching on Twitter launching on LinkedIn talking
  134. 13:26about the product every day 100% organic it's good that I was forced to do it
  135. 13:31early on and not rely on, you know, like paid marketing or, you know, paid ads
  136. 13:36because this like paid ads and and paid marketing in general is very useful. But when you have the skill of organic
  137. 13:43marketing, one, you can build a brand around your company and about you as a
  138. 13:49person and then two, the efficiency of paid marketing becomes much much
  139. 13:54stronger. Having that constraint of not having money to spend on marketing made
  140. 14:00it actually so that when we had money that money went a lot further uh when we when we actually spend it on marketing.
  141. 14:06First month we were at 3,000 MR. I think I posted about being ramen profitable. I
  142. 14:12think second month it was close to 40 and then it was 60 and then we got to 1
  143. 14:18million ARR 117 days in from that first tweet. It
  144. 14:23also helped me like make an intentional decision to not have chatbased as a lifestyle business. It is addicting to
  145. 14:29see the graphs go up. It is addicting to talk to customers and see how valuable the product is. It is addicting to hire
  146. 14:36people that you like and build stuff with them. I think getting there so quickly was so so so helpful to just
  147. 14:42like discard the idea of I'll just keep this as like you know a side lifestyle business and made me focus on making
  148. 14:49this a very big success early on. 0ero to a million versus a million to 10 million. What changes?

  149. 0→$1M vs $1M→$10M: What Changes?

  150. 14:55Like the problems you're facing when you're going from 0ero to 1 million are very different than the problems you're
  151. 15:00facing going from 1 to 10. And I imagine 10 to 100 is also going to be very different. 0 to one is more about
  152. 15:07finding what people want and like building that and like I don't think that's very hard. I think it's just about putting in the time and effort
  153. 15:13into talking to customers and like building and talking to them again. And it's just more about like you can brute
  154. 15:18force this. You can brute force this by putting in the work. I think going from 1 to 10 a lot of it is also there has to
  155. 15:25be like some you know like leadership skills you have to be you have to have some ability to to sell you have to have
  156. 15:31like ability to like explain your ideas explain your product clearly for some people maybe that's not very natural
  157. 15:37also a big part of it is building the culture building the team building the you know the as I said like the energy
  158. 15:44the incentives the processes that's just like a completely different game from going from 0 to one with like like maybe
  159. 15:50a threeperson team. That's not easy to do. Like a lot of people don't have the skills to do that. From what I've seen,
  160. 15:56going from 10 to 100 is also a completely different beast. But I think
  161. 16:01like a lot of the things you learn going from 1 to 10 is extremely helpful because like you have to have a lot more
  162. 16:07skills to be able to to have the performance to get there. How did you reduce churn early on? When

  163. Reducing Churn Early

  164. 16:13we started our churn was high and the reason was especially at the start of
  165. 16:19the AI wave a lot of people were experimenting with these new tools they didn't know anything about like how
  166. 16:24capable these tools are what use cases they're good for and then the the company was also very new so a lot of
  167. 16:30features that we have now we didn't have back then as a result of that you you will have high churn the reason we don't
  168. 16:36have high churn now and the reason we we have customers stick with us for a long time is because they see the product
  169. 16:43improve every day. I think even if it's not something that that customer specifically needs or use, I think
  170. 16:49seeing like that there is this company cares enough to push out stuff every day to to customers and like this is this is
  171. 16:56how fast they're shipping. I think this sends a signal that like we're building this for you. We are putting effort into
  172. 17:02making this a better product. So that was one was just like making sure that we're shipping and then all of these
  173. 17:08improvements are visible to customers. I think that that helps a lot with reducing churn. The other aspect of it
  174. 17:13was just improving the product. Like when you start a product, especially when you get a lot of traction early on,
  175. 17:18that's not the best version of the product. The best version of the product is after you get feedback from the customers, after you talk to them, after
  176. 17:24you collect insights from all of these hundreds or thousands of customers, then
  177. 17:29you realize, oh, hey, like this is actually what I want to build. And then when new customers come in, they see
  178. 17:35like the problem that 10 other customers have faced is already solved. just listening to them and getting on calls
  179. 17:41with them, seeing how they use the product and making sure they're set up correctly, making sure they're live with
  180. 17:46the product in production and like seeing all the hurdle hurdles they faced along the way and making sure we remove
  181. 17:54all of them. I I don't think there is like, you know, the a specific like
  182. 17:59flow, cancellation flow or like hiding the cancel button or anything like that
  183. 18:04which will help with your churn. Honestly, I think it just comes comes down to how good your product is and how
  184. 18:10good is it at communicating its value to the customer. Early on, what we did was
  185. 18:16we built features, we like released them and then it's just very hard for people to see or use. Sometimes people would
  186. 18:24churn for a reason that we have already solved like there's a feature they want already exists, but back then our
  187. 18:30product didn't do a good job at communicating that feature or making it easy for them to use. So what we did is
  188. 18:35we just like overhauled our own onboarding flow to make sure that like there's different paths depending on
  189. 18:42like the persona of the customer. For every path we make sure that we surface all of these capabilities and like how
  190. 18:48to set it up uh as you're on boarding and then also we started to give them the option to talk to one of the team so
  191. 18:54that they feel like there's a person you know behind this website that cares enough to get on a call with them and
  192. 19:01help them get set up correctly. But even if for some reason you still couldn't, you at least know that there is a person
  193. 19:07that cares enough to get on a call with you and help you get get set up. It's just like consistent product improvement
  194. 19:13over a long time. You'll just see the the churn graph go down. Anything else
  195. 19:19that claimed to have like a big impact on churn that was not about improving the product was probably more of a waste
  196. 19:26of time. What are your thoughts on PLG? PLG is extremely powerful, but I think

  197. Thoughts on PLG?

  198. 19:31it's just harder to do. It's actually much easier to do sales than to have a
  199. 19:37very powerful PLG engine that is always working and is always providing
  200. 19:42customers and making sure that those customers are successful. Like the the easy thing is to get on on sales calls,
  201. 19:48set up the product for the customer, make sure like the all the their questions are answered and that's it. That's the easy thing. The hard thing is
  202. 19:55to build a product that is extremely intuitive. people can just like go into it and sign up and without much effort
  203. 20:03be successful with it, especially if it's powerful. I think it's not smart to leave a lot of interest on the table
  204. 20:09without taking advantage of it for some reason like wanting to be PLG only. It is good to work with bigger companies.
  205. 20:15It's good to like help them on board. It's good to get on calls with them. It's good it's fine to have like the long sales processes if it means you're
  206. 20:22able to make sure that they're successful. So I think the reason a lot of companies start with salesled or even
  207. 20:28start with PLG but end up doing salesled at some point is because sales is just easier to do than like an extremely
  208. 20:35powerful product that's only growing from PLG. But I think there's a huge
  209. 20:40advantage of starting as a PLG product with self-s serve as the main interface
  210. 20:47and then from there going into enterprise and the reason is you're forced to make a good product because
  211. 20:55there is no one to like handhold your customers and like make sure they're successful because they're just like
  212. 21:02signing up on their own and like using the product on their own. So you're just kind of forced to have like a good intuitive simple but also powerful
  213. 21:08product to use and that's valuable whether or not you're doing sales. So having that foundation of like a strong
  214. 21:16self-s served platform and then on top of that adding like a salesled approach
  215. 21:21gives you extremely powerful products and that's why I think Stripe is ana like a very strong example of that.
  216. 21:27What's your SEO and AEO strategy? AEO. Um, a big part of it is just having

  217. SEO & AEO Strategy

  218. 21:34strong SEO. Most of these models, they get their information by just doing a web search. And if you're able to rank
  219. 21:41for humans, well, you you'll be able to rank also for the AIS because the way it works is very similar. Like the page
  220. 21:47rank algorithm is very similar. You know, the basic SEO strategies still work. just do the SEO stuff, you know,
  221. 21:53like writing the blog posts, internal linking, external linking, making sure it's actually a good quality that people
  222. 21:59want to reference when they're talking about something in the same space. And I think also like organic content helps a
  223. 22:06lot with SEO because when you have a strong brand, people want to reference it in like when they're doing their own
  224. 22:12content. And that's such a big part of SEO. A big part of also AEO is is just
  225. 22:18doing the basic CRM but also like review websites or things like you know Reddit or user generated content or even like
  226. 22:25YouTube and Tik Tok those are also very important because everything is getting indexed by the when the model is trained
  227. 22:32and then also when the model is searching in runtime you just need to make sure that you exist everywhere and
  228. 22:38you're delivering the same message everywhere. You just need to have a message that is very clear to you and
  229. 22:44your team what's the value you're delivering, who the target customer is, and like what's your unique selling points. This is what we want people to
  230. 22:50think about us and then just like spray that everywhere as much as possible in
  231. 22:56all the uh surface area you can but also like when you find something is working like one maybe specific channel is
  232. 23:02working doing more of that makes a lot of sense. Now it's just one person on our team is most like just focused on
  233. 23:09SEO and AU. How does warm outbound work? Warm outbound is this idea that because

  234. How Warm Outbound Works

  235. 23:16we started as a PLG first company because we're doing all of this content because we have all of this traffic on
  236. 23:23our website. We didn't start a sales letter. Like we didn't grow by, you know, cold calling customers and like
  237. 23:29convincing them to use us. We already have this massive amount of traffic and massive amount of following on organic
  238. 23:36channels. To boost it like a lot more, you add warm outbound. And basically
  239. 23:41what that means is you take a look at all the visitors that never sign up,
  240. 23:47visitors that do sign up, people who sign up, try the product but don't end up subscribing, people who subscribe but
  241. 23:54maybe like they stop using the product after a while. All of these are like the highest intent people like in the world
  242. 24:00that you currently have. You're not making sure that the the product is delivering the most value to them and
  243. 24:06you're not monetizing them the way that you can. Warm outbound is just making sure that all the effort you put into
  244. 24:12like getting all of this traffic like doing the SEO, doing the content is actually like pushing people in like
  245. 24:18that that last mile, making sure that they're successful. Like after they sign up, like you send them an email and say,
  246. 24:24"Hey, like we're here for you. who said you send them like a LinkedIn connection request say hey like let me know if you
  247. 24:29have any problem with the setup most of the time they're happy with that call because they see your content and like
  248. 24:34they feel like they know the brand and they have trust in the brand so that's what makes it warm and that's what makes
  249. 24:40it a lot more successful because cold is more about like numbers you know like
  250. 24:46you're spraying and praying that like hopefully like out of the 100,000 emails
  251. 24:51like I'll get two replies but this is more intentional like targeted outbound to a specific type of customer that
  252. 24:58already is invested in in in your company. For us, like it's 80% warm. So,
  253. 25:04a lot of it is like very personalized. A lot of it is like WhatsApp groups. A lot of it is like making friends with the
  254. 25:10customers and it is very hightouch and it's very like fulfilling also to our
  255. 25:16team because you get to like build relationships with those customers and like you get to actually solve their
  256. 25:21problems by just talking to them. How do you experiment with pricing? So when we started chatbas was more of a

  257. Experimenting With Pricing

  258. 25:27B2C tool like you will upload textbooks or you upload books and then you chat with them. The pricing then was $10 and
  259. 25:34and I think $30 was the other plan. When we transitioned into B2B of course that
  260. 25:39changed. We still have like very inexpensive plans for maybe like very smaller companies or or single
  261. 25:44developers to try out the product. We started at like $19 uh as the lowest plan. We're now at $40 as the lowest
  262. 25:51plan. And then we also experimented with moving the highest self serve plan from
  263. 25:57300 to 500. As we increased the pricing and we increased the pricing because the product just became more powerful and
  264. 26:04you're using more tokens for more reasoning and like you're solving much more complex issues when people saw the
  265. 26:09price increases. we we basically didn't have like any change in churn because people were seeing a lot more value from
  266. 26:16using the tools and like that's the the price increase. I think you want to make sure that like you treat your customers
  267. 26:22well and like you you're not just like trying to increase the price as much as you can all the time, but at the same
  268. 26:29time it is a good idea to experiment with the product. And also like experimenting with the pricing gives you
  269. 26:35a better idea on what type of customer is is getting the most value out of your
  270. 26:40business. So like you can talk to them more and understand their use case more. And as for like what pricing changed
  271. 26:47made the biggest impact, the biggest impact came from moving up market. When we did that, it was very obvious that
  272. 26:54this is the way we're growing from from this point onwards. Maybe the biggest mistake was not experimenting more. I've
  273. 27:00never seen a company like regret experimenting with their pricing, but I've seen many companies not
  274. 27:07experimenting enough for their pricing. The only balance that you want to make sure you hit is that you make sure that
  275. 27:12you still support your older customers that have used your product and have gotten value from it. Make sure that you
  276. 27:18find a balance where your customers are getting a lot more value than what
  277. 27:23you're charging them. The best pricing would be like you're just giving them so much value that they don't care about
  278. 27:29like the price they're paying you. Why revenue over margins? If you're choosing between like high

  279. Revenue Over Margins?

  280. 27:34margins, less revenue or more revenue, less margins, better long-term play is
  281. 27:40higher revenue, more customers, even if it comes with with less margin. I think a year ago, we decided to buy billboards
  282. 27:47in San Francisco because we wanted to have more brand awareness here. It was
  283. 27:52not obvious how much of an impact that will make and like how much ROI that will give us. But some things, you know,
  284. 27:59are not measured by return on ad spend. Some things are just more like this is increasing awareness and this is going
  285. 28:05to help you in the long run. This is increasing um your brand capital in general. On paper, it will reduce your
  286. 28:12your margins like very drastically. Uh especially if you're like a a smaller company. These are the things that you
  287. 28:18need to be doing if the goal is to build something as big as possible. And some
  288. 28:24of the time it's not going to work. If you're smart enough, hopefully most of the time it will work. The job is to take calculated risks.
  289. 28:30Co-founder or solo. There's two different decisions people need to make when they're starting a company, whether you want to find a

  290. Co-Founder or Solo?

  291. 28:37co-founder to work with or not. Uh and then whether you want to raise or not. Uh for both decisions, it depends. I
  292. 28:43think if you want to build a company and you don't have an idea of who you want
  293. 28:49as your co-founder, it's like you you want to still search. I think it's going to be very very hard to find like a
  294. 28:55co-founder. I think the best co-founders from what I've seen are people who have known each other for a while and they
  295. 29:01have, you know, like a lot of trust and confidence in each other's abilities. Of
  296. 29:06course, like there's some exceptions to every rule, but I think in general it's such a big risk. say, "Hey, I'm going to
  297. 29:12try to find a co-founder." And start working with this person. And a year in
  298. 29:18or like maybe even a few months in, you realize that this was not a good decision. Like having an amazing
  299. 29:24co-founder is better than being solo. Having a mediocre or maybe like slightly
  300. 29:29worse co-founder is probably a lot worse than than being solo. In my case, I
  301. 29:35didn't even have the time to think about whether or not I should have a co-founder. You just need to have extreme confidence in their values as a
  302. 29:43person but also their skills that complement you. When should you raise?

  303. When to Raise

  304. 29:48It depends on what you define as a successful outcome. If your idea of a
  305. 29:54successful outcome is let's say like you exit and you get like 10 or or like even
  306. 30:0050 million. I would argue that you have a higher chance of getting there if you bootstrap. If that's nothing to you and
  307. 30:06like your definition of success is a 500 million to like billions of dollars when
  308. 30:11you exit, then you need to raise because it's very hard to get to that outcome if you bootstrap. But I think it doesn't
  309. 30:17make sense if what you would define as success as like maybe 10, 30, 50 million
  310. 30:23outcome, but then you go and raise. I think it just makes it harder to achieve that because when you raise there's like
  311. 30:29a lot of variance because you you're you're trying to like 100x this investment and you need to like hire as
  312. 30:36fast as you can. You need to spend this money as as fast as you can if it makes sense. In most cases, you either like
  313. 30:41have an amazing outcome or like you're stuck in a place where it doesn't really make sense to sell the company for 100
  314. 30:47million because after like the preference tag, after the all the terms, the dilution, you're not going to get
  315. 30:53that outcome. And I would say getting to a hund00 million outcome bootstrapped
  316. 30:59might be even easier than getting to billions of dollars after you raise.

  317. Decision-Making Framework

  318. 31:05What's your decision-m framework? A framework for how you make decisions in life. Things change, right? Like
  319. 31:11especially in if you're building a company in a fastmoving industry, a lot of competitors, a lot of like new models
  320. 31:18released, a lot of um market dynamics change. These inputs are all factors
  321. 31:23into how you make a decision. A lot of people have a lot of, you know, pride
  322. 31:28and ego behind the decisions they're making, especially if they make that decision publicly because you don't want
  323. 31:34to look bad, you know, in front of your employees or in front of your team when you go back on a decision you made. But
  324. 31:41I think it's actually like it is a sign of low self-confidence. If you make a
  325. 31:47decision, you re like some time passes, the inputs change, you realize that this
  326. 31:52is not the best decision moving forward, but your ego is not allowing you to go
  327. 31:57back on that decision. And I think that's a recipe for a company to fail.
  328. 32:03And I think this is the case for founders, but it's also the case for everyone on the team. Everyone should
  329. 32:08know that dynamics change very quickly and we need to make sure that we're not
  330. 32:14sticking to a decision we made like two weeks ago because we don't want to hurt someone's feelings. Every day we wake up
  331. 32:22and we see the inputs. We know like why you made the decision two weeks ago. But you also know what changed and based on
  332. 32:28whatever changed does it make sense to do something else? And if the answer is
  333. 32:34yes, in 100% of the times you need to do that something else. And I think it's the job also of the founder to instill a
  334. 32:41culture where like going back on a bad decision is encouraged when you're
  335. 32:46building in such a fastmoving industry.
  336. 32:52Maybe it's useful to ignore the noise. Like if you look at all the people that fell into the trap of listening to what
  337. 32:58everyone else is saying in the space about like you know GPT rappers and like how there's no future so they stopped
  338. 33:04building but that was not the right idea. Now GPT rappers have rebranded to
  339. 33:10model harnesses and now like they're all the hype you know and now like you see companies that are have raised they're
  340. 33:16now like are doing more than 100 million in ARR in 3 years. you you could have
  341. 33:21like if they listen to the people that were saying, "Oh, this is a GPT rapper, then maybe they're not going to be in this position." Now, takeaway here is to
  342. 33:28just like people are going to speculate, maybe they're right, maybe they're wrong, but you don't lose anything if
  343. 33:34you just put your head down and just like work on building something valuable. I'm happy that I did that 3
  344. 33:41years ago.