“We got BlueCat to something like $5.2 million in revenue before we would even look at VC money.”
Michael Hyatt is speaking in front of a packed room at Brightspark for the Spotlight Series, intimate one-on-one conversations with Canadian founders on life as an entrepreneur. Launched and hosted by Achievers founder Razor Suleman, Hyatt kicked off the first event of the series, explaining why he wasn’t a fan of VC money when he started BlueCat in 2006.
“I just wanted to own everything, and I’d never built a company before, and I was so focused on doing it myself and having complete control…but over the years, I learned that capital builds business,” he says in the video below.
The reason? Hyatt believes that VC funding can be the “most expensive or the cheapest money” a founder can get. “If you take out $5 million, can you create $50 million in value? It’s expensive to take VC money and not spend it properly.”
Hyatt, who exited BlueCat for $400 million in late February, advises young founders who take VC money to still spend like they’re getting by on a shoestring. “You should act like whatever round you just did is the last round you’re ever gonna get.”
Watch Hyatt’s take on VC money below, as well as his thoughts on maintaining control and cycling investors.
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