I’ll never raise VC money again.

Do not index

I've raised VC before. That's exactly why I won't again.

Because of what it does to your math, your mindset, and your freedom before anything even goes wrong.

And most businesses simply don’t need VC money.

If you were on X last week, the horror stories were everywhere.

A GP fell asleep during a $15M pitch. Term sheets signed, money never wired. A founder offered his co-founders' stock in exchange for firing them.

Almost every founder I know who raised has a story like this.

But that's not even the real problem 👇

The fake validation trap

Here's the thing nobody warned me about.

When a VC writes you a check, you feel validated. Smart people with pattern recognition looked at your idea and said yes.

So you must be right.

That feeling cost me two years, twice.

I kept building products nobody was buying because I confused investor confidence with market demand.

VC money is not user validation. It never was.

The only validation that matters is someone opening their wallet and paying for your product.

Everything else is noise.

Congratulating a founder on raising is like congratulating a chef on getting the vegetables.

The meal hasn't been cooked yet. You haven't done anything. You've just started.

How VC math actually works

Most founders don't understand this part.

VCs run a power law model.

They expect 9/10 of their bets to fail. They need just one company per fund to return everything. So they're not optimising for your sustainable, profitable, free life (which you are!).

They're optimising for a lottery ticket that pays 100x.

If your business is doing well but not on a billion-dollar trajectory, they stop caring. No more money, and cold responses.

That's when the pressure kicks in.

You chase growth numbers someone wrote on a whiteboard. You stop building for users and start working just to raise the next round.

And you've lost 80% of the freedom you started building for.

This is why I'll probably never sell again either

When you bootstrap, and your products print cash, there's no pressure to exit.

No one writing numbers on paper for you to follow.

We are at $1M MRR across 5 products today. Every single one bootstrapped and profitable.

The best part isn't the number.

It's that I feel completely free. Free to move fast, change direction, double down, or slow down. Whatever feels right for the business.

That's why I started building in the first place.

When VC actually makes sense

I'm not anti-VC entirely. There are businesses where it genuinely makes sense.

True infrastructure plays where you need scale before revenue. Regulated industries where compliance costs are super high.

But most internet businesses don't need it.

You need users who pay. That's the only math that matters.

If you're building right now and thinking about raising money, ask yourself one question first:

Are you raising because you need the money to build, or because raising feels like progress?

If it's the second one, go find a paying customer instead.

That's real validation.

Reply and tell me 👇🏼

If given a choice, would you raise VC money?

I would love to read your opinion. And I read all my emails!

Life of an Indie Maker #05

The latest episode of my animated series is now out, check it out:

Tweet of the week

Most people struggle to build because they fear embarrassment.

Would you rather be safe or successful? Your choice.

Until next week,

Keep building

Tibo 💻

P.S. Remember - user validation over investor validation. Always. Read the VC horror stories here.