One of the big questions every entrepreneur faces is whether to try to self-fund their own business or to pursue capital from investors.  The decision has deep, long-lasting implications for the business and its owner.  Below you’ll find perspectives from some really bright entrepreneurs we had the opportunity to connect with recently.

Nicole Prettyman | Stationer & Calligrapher

My business is completely self-funded. The idea of investors is very enticing, especially if you need a sizable amount of money to open your business; however, you will always be beholden to someone else. For me it was about ownership of my business and I wasn’t willing to give up ownership or creative control. If I could go back I would not have done it differently. Being self-funded may have caused me to grow slower than I would have liked, but I believe slow growth is a good thing. It allowed me to be extremely intentional with every thing I was doing and to take a really hard look at every decision I was making. Read more>>

Kristi Frank | CEO and Founder of Clutch Creations

Clutch Creations has bootstrapped all funds from personal accounts to cover things like Intellectual Property and hiring creative services. We have been lucky enough to receive grant funding of a total of $12,500. Our team has been very active in competing in pitch competitions and although we’ve never won any, they were very valuable to our business because with every bit of the judge’s feedback, we were able to highlight areas of weakness and barriers that we have been able to pivot away from. If I could go back and change something about the funding of my business, I would have put forth a founders Work Agreement before putting any personal funds into the business. Read more>>

Shahzeen Rehman | Co-founder of Seat Check App

Our business is both self-funded and backed by an investor. Even if I go back, I wouldn’t do it differently. We put in the money ourself because we believed in the idea so much and only accepted outside investment when we had enough traction to make sure we had a succeeding product. It’s a huge responsibility when you take outside investment and you want to make sure you live up to the expectations and don’t let your investors down. That’s why we first put up the capital ourselves, scaled the product and used the investment to fuel up the efforts. Read more>>