From Ninh Bui’s flirt with VC money, to €1M ARR
In this context, ARR means Annual Recurring Revenue, or as we say in Amsterdam the ‘actual metric for a successful business’.
Ninh is going to give you a rundown of his thoughts of why to or why not to take venture capital in exchange for equity. The main takeaway he wants to share is that it’s possible to do it without VCs; something you astonishingly don’t see covered a lot in media outlets.
Where a VC investment is often being celebrated as the second coming of christ, its implications are often overlooked.
It’s like celebrating a mortgage, who does that?
You celebrate having ‘your own house’, but not that you actually took on a major cut in your financial freedom. The parallels with running a company are plain and simple within this analogy. The more partners you have, the more you have to share. The more equity you give away, the more ownership you share. So is it the best option? Ninh will tell his story at the AMSxTech conference in March 2017, and there’s room to meet up with him.
Sheer perseverance needed
Ninh Bui is the organizer of the much loved legacy that is Bubbleconf 2013, next to that the co-founder and CEO of Phusion, a company that specializes in making groundbreaking Unix software for highly demanding server environments. He is passionate about entrepreneurship and believes everyone has the power to shape their destiny through sheer perseverance.
You can call him bootstrapped, Profitable & Proud (BPP), not exactly what they expected… (BPPNEWTE, sort of)
From disrupting startups like Intercom to industry giants like Apple, more and more businesses deploy their sites via Passenger (one of their main products). Never in their wildest dreams could they had ever imagined that it would one day power over half a million sites though (and counting)!
His company had much more humble beginnings though! From starting a consultancy in university, to using and launching open source software. Furthermore launching it on almost unaffordable conferences. After unsuccessfully trying several business models in an attempt to balance product maintenance with their consultancy work it finally took off.
Just like Final Fantasy was Square Enix’ Hail Mary, this was ours, and we were incredibly lucky that it worked out.
Without dropping out of university — always a good idea — and withstanding a financial crisis in 2009, they achieved the Bootstrapped, Profitable and Proud moniker of making over $1M+ ARR without taking VC money. Deliberately leaving out all the details, he will tell pretty much everything on stage, attempts to explain his choices, and he will be at the drinks so you can learn from him and inspire him with your story.
All the reason to get a ticket and nerd out with Ninh and the other speakers this March.
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