Costs & Fundraising
Should I raise money before building the MVP or bootstrap first?
Answer:
If you can confirm demand cost-effectively (through landing pages, sales calls, or pilot customers), bootstraping initially can improve your leverage. Raise funds earlier when speed is crucial, the market is rapidly changing, or you need credibility to secure B2B deals. Investors typically want evidence: a clear problem, target customer, and traction signals - even small ones like waitlists, LOIs, or paid pilots.
Related Costs & Fundraising Questions And Answers
- How can I estimate what my MVP will cost to build without being technical?
- How can we keep cloud and infrastructure costs under control as we grow?
- How can we prepare our engineering and product setup for investor due diligence?
- What’s a realistic monthly budget for a startup dev team building an MVP?
- How do I decide between hiring employees vs contractors when runway is tight?
- What costs do founders usually forget when planning a fundraising runway?
- What metrics do investors expect from a SaaS startup before a seed round?
- How do I price my SaaS if we’re still early and don’t know the final scope?
- How do I calculate runway and burn rate in a simple way?
- What is staff augmentation cost vs hiring in-house, and how do I compare properly?
- How much equity should I give a technical co-founder vs hiring a CTO later?
- What should a startup prepare for technical due diligence in fundraising?
- How do I avoid over-hiring engineers after raising a seed round?
- What’s a sensible funding ask if we need to build and sell for the next 12–18 months?
- How do I show investors that our development cost is efficient and controlled?
- What’s the best way to negotiate developer rates with remote teams without hurting quality?
- How do we avoid building features that waste budget before product-market fit?
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