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3 lessons on switching from bootstrapped to VC-funded

Every entrepreneur must choose whether to bootstrap a company or use venture capital to fuel it. I’ve traveled these two drastically different paths. I spent more than a decade building a bootstrapped, profitable cash flow business, only to put all my chips back on the table with two venture-backed companies. My journey began with an interactive agency I founded in college called Cie Digital Labs, which then went on to incubate two successful venture-backed spin-outs. Last year, Cie Games was acquired by Glu Mobile for $100M, and my current venture Nativo recently raised a $20 million Series B round.
Greycroft didn’t offer Nativo the highest valuation, but offered the greatest value by demonstrating their domain expertise and ability to make high-value introductions. Within three months, Greycroft introduced us to senior contacts at publisher prospects that would have otherwise taken us a year to reach. Looking back, their involvement was a big part of our early success. 3. The Difference Between Building Purpose Versus Profit

VC’s forced me to think of the long game and playing to a future vision. While I thought I understood vision, every decision at my bootstrapped company came back to profit and that limited my ability to achieve full buy-in from the team. Shifting to a broader mission–focused on transforming a category or space–significantly expanded my ability to engage employees, industry peers, and customers.