Matthew Kelly tells a founder considering fundraising to first decide what they actually want. Build a small sustainable business making £3M a year, or chase rapid scaling with venture capital and an exit in five years. Know which path you're choosing before you raise.
A guy I've got to know, like, I guess the Internet. I never met him, but he's got a cool brand that's, like, much earlier stage. Now he's trying to raise money and I said to him, why are you trying to raise money? Because he was very much like, I want to do this for, like, 20 years. I was like, oh, we shouldn't raise money then, because they want to sell it in five years and you're going to have loads of, I guess, like, corporate pressure. And again, there's no, like, right or wrong, but it's just being, like, honest with yourself. Like, why are you in this game? Like, do you want to run? Like, are you, like, the artistic guy that just wants to spend all day, like, designing products and doing sick content? And you'd be happy if you got to 3 million revenue and stayed there for 10 years and that's probably better route for most people. People, or do you want to build a category leader, scale it as hard as you can and hopefully make 50 million quid?
