{"id":38254,"date":"2023-10-20T14:55:13","date_gmt":"2023-10-20T14:55:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/startupsmart.test\/2023\/10\/20\/revenue-is-the-goal-not-raising-money-vero-co-founder-startupsmart\/"},"modified":"2023-10-20T14:55:13","modified_gmt":"2023-10-20T14:55:13","slug":"revenue-is-the-goal-not-raising-money-vero-co-founder-startupsmart","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/uncategorized\/revenue-is-the-goal-not-raising-money-vero-co-founder-startupsmart\/","title":{"rendered":"Revenue is the goal, not raising money: Vero co-founder &#8211; StartupSmart"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"td-post-featured-image\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"445\" height=\"352\" itemprop=\"image\" class=\"entry-thumb\" src=\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/l_l_chris-hexton-445a.jpg\" alt=\"\" title=\"l_l_chris-hexton-445a\"\/><\/div>\n<p>Founders need to stop using investment rounds as benchmarks for success and instead look towards customers and sales, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.getvero.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Vero co-founder<\/a> Chris Hexton says.<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>While large capital raises are an \u201camazing achievement\u201d, he says they shouldn\u2019t take attention away from startups that are successfully bootstrapping.<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cTypically it\u2019s all about investment rounds,\u201d Hexton says. \u201cThey\u2019re something to be celebrated, but it\u2019s harder to raise attention if you\u2019re doing well and not taking investments.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou don\u2019t have to raise money. The end goal isn\u2019t to raise money.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><b>Pragmatic bootstrapping<\/b><\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Email marketing software startup Vero hasn\u2019t taken an investment in its near-three years of existence, apart from a small contribution as part of the Startmate accelerator program.<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>It <a href=\"financing-a-business\/cashflow\/vero-email-marketing-software-grows-revenue-1300-per-cent-in-12-months\/2013120611325.html\">grew revenue by 1300% in its first year<\/a>, and is still enjoying 10% month-on-month growth in terms of customers, on the back of money from the co-founders\u2019 own wallets.<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>To achieve this sort of growth without looking towards outside investors entrepreneurs have to be realistic above all else, Hexton says.<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s a matter of being really pragmatic and making sure people pay for a product they get value from,\u201d he says. \u201cYou need to do what\u2019s right for you.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s still bootstrapped and it\u2019s coming to a point where it\u2019s fully-formed and something people use every day, and pay for it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><b>A time-consuming distraction<\/b><\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Too many startups are raising money just for the point of it, without any real plans for the future, Hexton says.<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou can be distracted trying to raise money for four or five months, and that definitely slows you down,\u201d he says. \u201cAnd once you do you might go: \u2018holy shit, we actually have a lot to do now\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s a hard process, and it should be. It can take your focus away from the business.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Vero more than doubled its team since the start of last year, and the SaaS startup is enjoying strong sales and continual growth, helping it to build a runway and focus on the company rather than external investors.<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>This method isn\u2019t for every startup, Hexton says, and there are many different factors that contribute to an ability to rely solely on bootstrapping.<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf you need money early on to pour fuel on the fire, then it\u2019s worth the distraction,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhen I started I was 23 and didn&#8217;t have a family or mortgage so there were very low overheads. That really frees you up.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cA lot of my friends are in very different positions and in those scenarios it\u2019s a lot harder to bootstrap.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><b>Building a vision<\/b><\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>One of the secrets to Vero\u2019s bootstrapped success has been cost-effective content marketing, which Hexton says his crucial to an early-stage SaaS startup.<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cPeople don\u2019t buy the first version of software just for the software,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThey\u2019re buying into where this company is going and in someone who is changing the game.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>So now that Vero is an established, fast-growing company, do the founders have any plans to finally look for outside investment?<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNo we don\u2019t,\u201d Hexton says.<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe\u2019re obviously in a good place. We think we could raise an investment round now.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhen we started we didn\u2019t think we had a shot and we thought we could do without it. That was the best thing we could do to build a company that\u2019ll still last in ten or 15 years.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><i>Want to grow your business&nbsp;with Instagram? <\/i><a href=\"startupschool\/\"><i>StartupSmart School can help<\/i><\/a><i>.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Founders need to stop using investment rounds as benchmarks for success and instead look towards customers and sales, Vero co-founder<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":61746,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38254"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38254"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38254\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/61746"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38254"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38254"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38254"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}