
Ask HN: Should I raise, stay bootstrapped or quit? - trez
Hi HNers,<p>I am Anthony, solo French founder of LiNote. We build a device so obvious to use really old people ( 75 to 100 ) can use it even with cognitive diseases. Their caregivers can video call them, send them reminders, pictures, etc.<p>I&#x27;ve been working on it for 5 years now. Our MRR is now over 12kE. We were at 4kE a year ago. Our 350 customers love it and talk about us a lot. Yet we are growing slowly at 5-8% a month.<p>Our team is 4 people only:
1 dev
1 content marketing
my girlfriend at operations and simple customer supports
me at tech support and &quot;CEO stuffs&quot;.<p>My girlfriend and I love what we do but we provide support 7 day a week, 24H a day.
We have worked every day for the last 18 months.<p>We are about to get cash positive. We  haven&#x27;t raised money but from family. I am now able to pay my girlfriend and I enough to live decently but far from what I use to earn as a python dev.<p>We aren&#x27;t at product market fit yet but our retention is great and we think we are on something but our dev is busy with bug fixes and tiny improvements.<p>I am getting worse at selling my vision the more operational tasks I do and the more time I struggle with the company. 1000 of customers seems far when you fight for 20 each months.<p>I&#x27;ve talked with local investors but that didn&#x27;t work 3 times. I wasn&#x27;t really committed and feel disconnected to their way of thinking ( hire blindly, build partnerships with big companies). Local investors doesn&#x27;t seems knowledgeable.<p>I can&#x27;t decide between staying bootstrapped which fit us better but the road seems so long before being able to live comfortably and before being able to hire new critical people.<p>Raising money is a good option to grow faster but not being at product-market fit seems like a non-optimal time to raise.
I sometimes feel like I am being stubborn and if anything big should have happen, it would have already happened before.<p>I am sure the HN crowd would have insightful comments.
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bellwether
Some questions that I hope will help :)

For growth: How much do your competitors make? Where and how do they market
products?

For brand: Why did you build this product? Do you feel you can still fulfill
your mission?

For options: Does this need to be a full time business? Or, can you run it
part time for additional income?

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staticautomatic
Who are you marketing to, through what channels, and how much does the product
cost?

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tresontani
To caregivers through our website and health professionals

