Founders

I have major respect for founders who return capital to investors if they realize what they're doing isn't going to work or be venture scale

Will only raise for Bountycaster if we feel confident about venture scale in the future and we need the capital + help to accelerate

Co-founder @bountycaster (bountycaster.xyz). Co-producer @ethereumfilm. Previously co-founder of Scalar Capital and product at Coinbase

Totally, but also worth acknowledging that every startup doesn’t work until it does.

The only “failure modes” are running out of money or giving up.

So if you have venture scale ambitions, you might as well give it a shot!

ambition is not reality. 💯 don't agree with this.

DTC is largely great for businesses but without a software play or GTM growth play (community for gymshark, advertising for liquid death), its not a model you can build venture scale.

it's structural often. it can still work, but just not be VC scale. 10B+ at this point.

micro saas as a vertical is largely going to be self funded.

The longer-term reasons are (1) we simply have not found interest from larger institutional investors to support investing in calm companies at a scale that allows us to build a sustainable, calm business ourselves.

and (2) while I’ve been tracking the developments in AI, I finally got my hands dirty and re-learned to code testing the new AI development tools and workflows. Everything is Micro-SaaS now and solo founders or small teams will quickly fly through the early phases of business

Tyler Tringas

ambition is not reality. 💯 don't agree with this.

DTC is largely great for businesses but without a software play or GTM growth play (community for gymshark, advertising for liquid death), its not a model you can build venture scale.

it's structural often. it can still work, but just not be VC scale. 10B+ at this point.

micro saas as a vertical is largely going to be self funded. https://x.com/tylertringas/status/1873736687018508704

software artist | building /outpaint | ex: @coinbase ex: bisontrails | seeker of the flow state | artivilla.com

In many circumstances, models that haven’t proven to be vc scale, you can still build successfully.

Of course if your ambition is to be vc scale, certainly can pivot to make it vc backable. but that’s 1% of the businesses out there.

We’ve barely scratched the surface of saas in the former category given the cost of software until now.

So I guess we are saying the same thing — but shouldn’t be focusing on the value to the customer rather than what category it fits?

Respectfully, I’m not sure what your point is?

I think we agree that some businesses aren’t a great fit for the VC asset class — DTC being one of them.