Raising VC is a full-time job. (lol)
While others chase investors, I chase Stripe notifications.
Here’s the part no one says out loud:
Every hour you spend pitching VCs is an hour you’re not building or selling. Period.
Founders love to brag about “hustle.” But what are you hustling for?
↳ Fancy investor intros?
↳ Term sheets you don’t understand?
↳ Headline dopamine hits?
Let’s get real.
Venture dollars are not your fuel, customer dollars are.
Money in the bank from users who NEED your product beats a LinkedIn flex from Sequoia any day.
Trust me, I’ve run both plays:
↳ I’ve done the pitch deck parade
↳ I’ve chased FOMO deals
↳ I’ve roasted 9 months playing calendar Tetris with VCs
You know what I got at the end?
A fat stack of broken promises and a product starving for attention.
At BuddiesHR, I flipped the equation:
Sell first. Fund never.
Focus on revenue, not runway.
While the hungry founder chases another 30-minute “coffee,” I’m stacking paid trials.
While the startup influencer tweets about his new partners, I’m onboarding a customer that emails us, “Damn, I needed this.”
This is not a game of who can raise the most.
It’s about who builds something people can’t stop buying.
Brutal truth:
↳ 99% of VC-backed startups die playing someone else’s game
↳ Founders forget the only scoreboard that matters: paying users
↳ Investors want multiples, customers want magic
I don’t care how slick your pitch is.
Exits are built on revenue, not retweets.
Stop fundraising if you haven’t sold anything.
Either build a business or build a deck.
You can’t do both well at the same time.
At BuddiesHR, we’re too busy closing customers to pitch.
Founders: Wake up. Stack money from users, not VCs.
You want freedom? Sell something.
You want power? Keep your cap table clean.
The uncomfortable truth: you’ll never see a unicorn if you’re chasing shirts instead of sales.
So which are you actually building, a company, or just a case study for someone else’s portfolio?
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👋 Hey, I'm J.Y!
I'm the co-founder of BuddiesHR, the #1 Employee Engagement Software that lives in Slack.
I post 1x a day about my journey and share what I've learned along the way.
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P.S. I'm writing a no-BS B2B SaaS playbook with everything I've learned. Want a free copy? Click “Visit my website” to sign up.