Founders

What are the differences between scaling a small business vs. scaling a VC funded business?

🕯️They/them. Scaled cos from 0-$300k in arr, 7-35 employees, 0-100k users. Now I make beautiful, functional, and ethically made candles at humankind.place

Growth and exit options. 

Since growth is covered elsewhere in this thread, I'll focus on exit. 

You could sell your small business for $1 million dollars to someone who values it either for the product, brand, or cash flow. That theoretical amount may or may not be worth it to you. 

You could simply shut it down because it's not worth it anymore.

Or, you can just grind at it for decades, slowly building towards something.

For Pinata, my mandate is to generate a successful return to our investors in a relatively short amount of time. To do so, high growth is necessary and if I can't achieve that it drastically scopes down my options for exit.

Everyone is from somewhere. Cofounder and CEO of Pinata. https://www.pinata.cloud/

Maybe it will just generate cash and that's a good business! Maybe it's a step to another business. Maybe it generates enough cash you can run two businesses. There are a lot of ways to have success without an exit.

Thanks for sharing. I'm not sure what I see an exit being so I guess I'll just keep grinding

The clarity around your mandate as a venture backed business is refreshing.

Too many people don’t understand that VC is a tool for a very specific job, and that misunderstanding leads to frustration all around.