We raised $35,000,000 from Sequoia - VEED
We just raised $35,000,000 from Sequoia!
Strange post to put on Indie hackers right?
But as a profitable boostrapped company doing +$6M ARR, I thought it would be useful to lay down our thinking here as many of you might be thinking about this?
Let's get into it!
Opportunities like this are rare.
We are in a big market and from the very start, our users have pulled the product out of us. It has never felt like we have had to push VEED uphill, the company wants to grow fast and we think we should give it the fuel to do so.
Technically, it's a hard product to build.
The resources we need to serve millions editing, rendering videos & sharing video is significant. As a bootstrapped company, we would make hires as our revenue grew. Now with funding, we can invest ahead of time.
A group of kids.
At the start, the team was in their 20's. Now our team is a lot more diverse for the better. Then, payroll scaled into hundreds of thousands and the stakes got higher. Small fluctuations in revenue per month no longer phase us, allowing us to build long-term
We raised later in the game.
If you can get to the position where you don't need to raise, any deal is "take it or leave it". For us, the most dilutive funding rounds were over. You can use your position to dictate the pace, secondary shares or special terms in the deal.
The right partners to work with.
I spoke with many of VC's. Some want to buy a part of your company and others want to back you. Luciana at Sequoia felt very much that she wanted to back us. And Instead of offering to be helpful, they proactively did.
Final Thoughts
Every founder, company & market is different. Should I raise or not? You have to pick the path that is best for you and your vision of the future. If you want to did deeper into our thinking, we wrote about it on our blog.
Thanks Sabba
It's finally happened — Indie Hackers has become a place for fundraising announcements 😝 Jk jk, congrats Sabba and team!
$35M is a lot of money. What's the vision of VEED as a unicorn company 10 years from now? Doing the same at a later scale, or doing something much different?
First of all, congrats Sabba, this is insane!
What do you feel like was the breaking point when everything started to click together and you knew you have to focus on this full time and give all your energy to it?
This is inspiring.
Bootstrap till you're in a power position with the VCs sounds like the right way to do it.
Congrats!
Agreed! I like this a lot. Conversely, if they’d built it to raise they wouldn’t have been in this strong a position now potentially.
PS - great poses HAHA
Congrats! Love your video editor. Are you also using ffmpeg in the browser?
Must be - it's basically built on ffmpeg js I assume. That said awesome achievement business wise - if not technical.
Inspiring
Impressive, congrats to the team! I really enjoy following VEEDs startup journey
@sabba, especially since I'm also a tech founder forced to turn marketer and growth hacker 🥵 Good to see an example of someone who made it work!
congrats
Is this funding for a percentage of share or there is possibility to buy back shares and own the company again 100%?
is this similar to "Kapwing" video editor?
Thanks for sharing your story and massive congrats! Really like the idea of bootstrapping into a strong position to raise for a Series A. 💯
Congrats! I have already been thinking Veed is amazing but now I know that you guys have been bootstrapped so far I became even bigger fan of it. Great job😀
I've seen Veed story on your career page just a few days ago after meeting one of your colleagues, this makes me so happy for you guys! You have such an amazing, crazy story. Well done!
Congrat Sabba! Veed is an amazing product, and such a great story. I've followed your posts from the early days, and you have been inspirational and so helpful. Your blog posts are always informative and entertaining.
I don't think I would ever consider raising VC because I fear that it commits you to the end result of either going public or selling to a strategic buyer, both of which sound like horrible outcomes to me. Going public puts you on a never-ending quarterly-earnings-growth treadmill and there is constant pressure to maximize shareholder value. And most strategic buyers screw up their acquired companies. As someone that highly values independence, I think the best possible outcome is to sell to a strategic that just let's you run a standalone business, not unlike Indiehackers/Stripe, or maybe Zappos/Amazon, but I think that's pretty rare.
Was this ever a concern for you, and how did you come to terms with it?
Regardless, I hope it's the right long-term decision for you and hope that it all works out!
Do you consider yourself still an indiehacker company now or are you going to slowly creep into an evil super corp?
IMHO The answer: your actions and future will tell!
For now, congrats on the raise and rooting to see you guys do even "more well"!
Congrats
Congrats, Sabba. Your product hunts to the veed's landing pages were remarkable and hard to replicate.
Now, what you gonna do with all that cash? Buy GGLOT?
Woah, nice! Agree there are some instances in which funding makes sense (if the product is hard to build/maintain).