
Ask HN: I built a niche MVP, should I try to raise money or keep self-funding? - questionsss
I&#x27;ll try to give as much detail as possible, but I&#x27;d like to keep some anonymity.<p>My background<p>A year ago I finished an MBA and spent some time looking for jobs. I didn&#x27;t find anything, but an idea came up that I wanted to work on and I enrolled in a coding bootcamps. I had some background so I finished their material in about a month (Node&#x2F;React). For various reason I switched to Rails and took another couple of months learning and build the idea as a learning tool. I have a lot of contacts in the target market and a background in sales and am confident that I can drive users to at least sign up. My SO and I can survive on one income.<p>The market<p>I am working on the idea alone. The market size is very small (approx 200k users worldwide), but affluent and currently underserved in the area the platform seeks to meet (essentially recruiting). Total revenue is hard to come by because the market is pretty opaque, but I estimate there is easily $50m&#x2F;yr spent in direct fees paid (indirect costs of the current system are much, much higher). I estimate I need about 10% of the users in the market to make sales (fewer if geographically grouped together).<p>Progress<p>I have a working MVP and user feedback. That feedback is being implemented. I have spent about $2.5k on contractors (but 1&#x2F;2 was for a bad hire with  no working output). I estimate that these changes will take about $1.5k. I was willing to risk $10k so I have about $4k remaining (including the money I spent for bootcamp etc).<p>Question<p>Should I try to raise money with the idea that I would spend it to pay dev talent and keep building or should I go over my allocated cash and continue to self-fund?<p>Assumptions (that fit in the char limit)<p>-Small market disqualifies a lot of angel&#x2F;seed money
-I&#x27;m open to a co-founder, but they will need to draw some money
-I could continue to manage everything through contractors as the site increases in complexity
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arsalanb
To be fair, you need to find yourself in a situation where raising funds is
the easiest thing on your "to-do" list. Raising funds will revolve around
whether or not your product resonates with your target user segment and how
many people would actually pay to use your product/service.

Once you've found the answer to those questions, what you do next will be
dictated by logic. Best of luck!

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brudgers
One way to raise money is to sell the future product to the people who need it
before it is completed. The ability to presell the product validates that the
product is something people will pay for because it solves one of their
important problems. Even without presales, talking to potential customers
initiates a benificial relationship for future sales. It also begins
establishing your company's sales culture and practices.

Good luck.

