Bootstrapping with Angel Money: Josh Levy, CEO of BeenVerified (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: Besides the $600,000 and the $200,000 that you raised, did you raise more money?

Josh Levy: We did. We did a Series B with another high net worth extended friends and family group for around $1.3 million in 2012.

Sramana Mitra: So you’ve raised over $2 million to build the business.

Josh Levy: Yes, over five years.

Sramana Mitra: This is primarily a friends and family/angels business that you have grown to about 100,000 subscribers. You’re basically looking to take it to the next level at this point, right?

Josh Levy: Yes.

Sramana Mitra: Anything else that you want to share?

Josh Levy: In terms of education and the journey, I would echo a lot of the thoughts around bootstrapping. It’s worked out for us. I think what’s super exciting about where we are now is how cost effective it is to start a business. I don’t think everyone has to be always thinking about how to build the next Uber.

Even if it’s a million dollar business or a five million dollar business, the longer you can wait without taking institutional money and the longer you can wait to bootstrap your way, the wider range of options you have in terms of what opportunities you can take. From what I see from a lot of early entrepreneurs that I speak to, the success metric that they’re focused on is raising venture capital.

Sramana Mitra: Yes, which is totally flawed.

Josh Levy: I totally see the world in the opposite way. The first thing that you should be focused on is signing up your first customer. No matter how bad the product is, you’ll always make it better. The raising of venture capital is not the end of the journey.

I’d love to see more people doing more bootstrapping and more figuring it out on their own. There are just aren’t many unicorns to go around. If you’re only focused on a unicorn, that’s going to be your only option. The VCs are incentivized to make lots of bets that make 10 times investment. Entrepreneurs have to put in two to five years of their life.

Sramana Mitra: I have written endlessly about this subject. We echo this message in lots of our literature. Entrepreneurship equals customers, revenues, and profit. Financing and exit are optional. It seems like the whole entrepreneurship has equated entrepreneurship with financing. It’s a real disservice to young entrepreneurs who are trying to learn the business.

Josh Levy: I totally agree, especially because it’s such an exciting time where you can bootstrap with zero dollars and hustle your way towards figuring it out.

This segment is part 6 in the series : Bootstrapping with Angel Money: Josh Levy, CEO of BeenVerified
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