Taking investor money vs. bootstrapping your business

Okay if you are on the startup side of LinkedIn like me then you've probably seen a lot of posts from founders who will encourage you not to take VC and to bootstrap as long as possible or ideally the whole time you build your company never take investor money. But as someone who did raise VC money for their business, I raised about 1.25 million for our pre seed round last year. I just wanted to offer an alternative perspective why I think that was a good choice for me. caveat is I don't think VC is right for everyone obviously. If you can grow your business on your own with no funding and become profitable, you own all of your company and that's the best case scenario. The reality is that's also the hardest case scenario. And here's three reasons why I think raising VC money was right for me and why it probably makes sense for a lot of other people too. The first kind of simple reason is I just don't come from a crazy amount of wealth. I live in Manhattan and my rent is really expensive and I didn't have a crazy job or family money to fall back on and build a startup full time without a salary if you have a spouse who can support you or you've worked in a really high income job and have enough saved and this isn't a problem for you, then great. But for me, I frankly wouldn't have been able to start this company at all without the funding to quit my job and put everything I have, all of my time into it. The second one and this might be obvious, but if you're a first time founder or you don't come from the startup world, the resources that you get when you work with a reputable VC firm are really incredible. My lead investor gave us a free office space that my whole team gets to work out of, a 10 minute walk from my apartment. They have introduced me to key hires, to partners, they help me with strategy and go to market. Like it is a wildly helpful resource um to have people who know what they're doing and do this full time. And finally, the argument I see on LinkedIn the most for bootstrapping is that it's never been easier to build a company with limited resources and to become profitable on your own. And you see stories of people reaching 1 million ARR in just a few months with a team of one or two. And that's great, don't get me wrong. But if that's true, let's assume it is because it actually still is a lot harder than that. It also means that competition is going to be fiercer than ever and it's going to be increasingly difficult to differentiate, which means that capital and funds honestly have become their own moat. If you have a marketing budget, if you can build a better product, if you can grow and scale faster than everyone else, then that is an advantage on its own. It's other players maybe do everything as well as you, but they don't have the funds to move as quickly or have quite as high quality of our products. Then that's another reason for gaining capital and moving as fast as you can with as many funds as you can. Those are just my high level thoughts. Obviously, I won't know for sure if I made the right choice long term until my company is ultimately wildly successful or fail. So I'll circle back, but I can say I really don't think my company would even exist and we definitely wouldn't have gotten as far as we have now if I didn't take at least an initial VC funding. I'm really grateful for my investors and the guidance they've given me. So that's my argument for taking investor money, might not be right for everyone, but let me know what you think in the comments.