The Tale of Two Trajectories
For US SaaS founders, the path to $10M ARR (Annual Recurring Revenue) looks very different depending on their funding model. Your development strategy must align with your runway.
The VC-Funded Path
- Goal: Growth at all costs.
- Strategy: Build fast, ship fast. Invest heavily in sales and marketing features early. Hire a large engineering team to build out a broad feature set to capture market share quickly.
- Risk: High burn rate. If benchmarks aren’t met, the next round of funding might not come.
The Bootstrapped Path
- Goal: Profitability and sustainability.
- Strategy: Niche down. Build a ‘pain-killer’ product for a specific vertical. Prioritize features that users are willing to pay for *today*. Outsourcing development to cut costs is common.
- Risk: Slower growth. Competitors with deep pockets might out-spend you on marketing.
Summary
There is no right answer. Mailchimp (bootstrapped) and Slack (VC-funded) both won. Know your game before you write the first line of code.
