Felipe Chavez Cortes

💡 Many companies I invested in building hard/software systems for the physical world are seeing success with Hardware As a Service (HAAS) revenue models. Multi-year contracts, high margins, better pricing and always the latest tech, and easier to project future revenues.

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A Venture Studio ignored venture and won. They built for Cashflow, not Venture. Here is how they did it: 20 years ago, an Atlanta-based venture studio operated with a unique approach. Instead of targeting VC or Private Equity, they  focused solely on cash-flow businesses like  professional service firms.  Here are 2 powerful lessons every studio can learn from their model: ------ 1. Funding Mechanism: A Line of Credit - Companies were funded via a line of credit, not equity capital.  - Portcos had to become cash flow neutral within 18 months—recycling capital quickly.  - Reduced funding needs = Faster scalability. This setup created discipline. Each month, portfolio founders had to justify every dollar spent. Want to hire McKinsey? Nope—do it internally.  Result? Founders learned to obsess over cash flow—an essential entrepreneurial muscle.  --- 2. Picking Founders Wisely  Successful founders were not running from bad employers. Instead, they were executives who always dreamed of building something but lacked the timing or resources earlier in life.  These proven leaders had:   - Strong networks   - Deep domain expertise   - Relentless drive to finally fulfill their vision  They thrived almost every time.  P.S. Which of these lessons resonates with you? 👇 Best, Matthew Burris

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Welcome to the Seedstrap era. Bootstrapping has historically stood in the opposition of the VC model. There have been a handful of venture scale outcomes over the years, most notably Mailchimp, but by and large, a generation of founders was taught that venture capital was the only viable path to growing a large business. I speak from experience, my cofounder Adam Robinson and I bootstrapped and scaled our startup to a $10M exit, and after I transitioned to my role at Forum Ventures he used the cashflows from the first business to launch Retention.com($13M ARR with 6 people) and RB2B($5M in ARR in 13mo with 5 people). Increasingly I am talking to more and more founders embracing an evolution of the bootstrapper mentality - the seedstrapper. With the advent of Ai tooling - these founders are raising an initial pocket of capital from investors, and in some cases an A round, but have no aspirations of raising large institutional rounds to scale their business. In the past, bootstrappers could not compete with the growth rates of their well funded competitors, but in this new normal we are seeing that change, as large growth rounds are no longer the prerequisite for explosive growth. The venture market is adjusting. I for one - along with many other pre-seed investors - am embracing seed strapping, as this new breed of startup still has the opportunity to reach $100M+ in revenue, now just with considerably less dilution along the way. Later stage funds are at more of a crossroads however, with many adjusting their investment lens to focus more on deep tech, hardware, and AI infrastructure - sectors where scaling still requires massive amounts of capital.

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