Practical Founders

Who are the practical founders? We are a growing passionate tribe of serious startup founders who are building software companies with no outside funding or just a little practical funding. Most software founders can be more successful–winning their very big prize and doing it their way–without big outside funding. It’s a great time to be a practical founder. 20 years ago, we raised VC funding to grow startup companies into very big companies. Now there’s a different way to create success for even more founders. 1) 50% of software companies on our curated Gregslist.com list of 6000 software companies do not have any outside funding. And 25% of software companies on Gregslist have just a little angel or seed funding. So fewer than 25% of all software companies on Gregslist have outside funding. 2) Founders are growing companies to $2M, $5M, and $10M annual recurring revenue (ARR) and selling them for 10x revenue valuations and more. There are 20-50X more exits for less than $100M than $1B+ unicorn exits and IPOs, but we don’t hear about these incredible founder exits. 3) The massive “VC-Industrial Complex” drives regional incubators, accelerators, pitch competition, local service providers, and global tech media to push the idea that “all tech startups should get big funding” even though big VC funding is appropriate for just 10%-20% of all software companies around the world. 4) Startups are building high-quality software solutions for under $500K or $1M and growing these businesses without major outside investment. They can grow these to $1M-$5M with savvy customer acquisition and creative frugality. 5) Savvy and happy founders who want to serve their customers and their employees in amazing ways that financial investors would never support. And create new markets that are “too small” for big venture investors. 6) Founders of a huge wave of startups in India, Europe, and Latin America are creating growing global software companies very efficiently too.