Our team started out committed to being bootstrapped last year.

Every now and then we’ll take a call with VCs when they reach out. Partly out of curiosity and partly because “the hardship of getting started” is real.

Last week a VC asked my co-founder and me if we wanted Roadmap to be a unicorn. As a founder you’re prepared to answer the tough questions with a VC. But this question made me laugh. To us it felt like the equivalent of asking someone if they wanted kids on a first date.

To be or not to be a unicorn, like you mentioned here, is simply not on our radar. It’s not how we’re defining success or the future direction of our business.

My answer was “right now we’re focused on building a helpful product people will pay for.”

After the call my co-founder and I had a good laugh. But when I thought about it, it’s actually an efficient question for a VC to ask. It’s also an important question for founders to ask themselves. Our answer to this question isn’t aligned with acceleration. And that’s ok.

Acceleration is one of many paths. It’s not the next logical step for every business. While it wasn’t news to our ears that we’re mismatched with VC, it was a more efficient affirmation of why we wanted to be bootstrapped to begin with.

It’s not that we don’t think it’s possible or that we don’t believe in ourselves or our product. We’ve built products together at startups with capital and without. For the 1% of startups that become unicorns, there are a ton more that end up with real product / culture misalignment trying to build something valuable at an accelerated pace. Heck even the ones who do become unicorns (looking at you Uber) have these problems too. We believe there’s a better way.

DHH, this is such a refreshing narrative to hear and is much appreciated. 🙌