Greeting Pioneers,

This week, we offer a reality check for the systemic bs that tells you need to fundraise to fuel your dreams. ick.

Bootstrap Your Way to PMF

Founders love to complain about the lack of venture capital. They talk about how hard it is to raise here, how investors don't get it, how there isn’t enough money, or how our “ecosystem” isn't mature enough.

Meanwhile, they're pitching investors with nothing but a deck and a dream. No product, customers, or any revenue to prove those customers actually want what they're building. Just vibes and a TAM slide.

The Signal You're Actually Sending

It’s not 2021 anymore. When you show up to an investor asking for money before you've built anything, you're signaling low agency.

You're telling them you can't figure out how to build a prototype without their cash. That you’re too lazy to Youtube your way through AI. That you need someone else to believe in your idea before you'll bet your own time on it.

Investors don't back low-agency founders. They back people who find a way regardless of resources. The founders who are vibe coding an MVP. Who go door to door selling to businesses with a $2 folder/brochure they made themselves in Canva.

That's the signal investors want to see. Replace "give me money so I can figure out if this works" with "Look at all these dollars I have to prove I can get people to buy this with duct tape and hustle, now help me scale it".

Raising Too Early Kills Startups & Dilutes Your Equity On Failed Experiments

Money before validation is poison, so it’s a good thing no one wants to give it to you right now. It lets you build for months without finding customers, funds features nobody asked for, and creates the illusion of progress while you burn runway on procrastinating the only thing that actually matters in a startup: founder-driven sales.

Bootstraping forces you to answer the hard questions immediately. Figure out how to position your product to sell, then make it keep the promises you’re peddling, or die.

That constraint is a gift. It makes you prospect customers. It forces you to find the shortest path to revenue. It teaches you what matters versus what's nice to have. All the things you should learn before raising money anyway.

The founders who raise too early skip this education. They spend months building, burn through their round, then go to sell it only to realize they need to add a bunch of features to get people to buy it, but now they're out of money with no traction and investors who don’t want to reinvest. All that and you lost ~25% of your company to boot.

Without money, you have to do everything on smaller scale which usually means getting information faster.

You Can Learn Anything - If You Don’t Agree, Don’t Found A Tech Startup

The excuse heard round the world: "I'm not technical. I need money to hire a developer."

Bullshit. You can learn to build a prototype in a weekend. That's all you need to validate an idea.

YouTube, Lovable, and Cursor exist. You can prompt your way to a functional MVP in days. It'll be ugly. It'll be a frustrating experience for you. But if you can't cobble together something that demonstrates value, you probably don't understand the problem well enough to be building a solution.

And if you refuse to learn the basics of how software works, you're going to get eaten alive by technical co-founders and dev shops anyway. You can't manage what you don't understand. You can't make intelligent product decisions if you treat code like magic.

You’ve gotta stop waiting for money to hire someone to build your idea. Learn enough to do a small version of it yourself. Then raise money to scale it up.

You Aren’t Venture Backable. Become Venture Backable.

Louisville doesn't lack venture capital. It lacks venture-backable startups.

People have this delusional idea that they’re entitled to hundreds of thousands of other people’s hard-earned dollars. That that’s how every other founder is creating success, and that if it’s not there for them, it’s because either they’re being marginalized, or because Louisville is “behind.” They think this because our culture is telling them to. Every other startup event in Louisville features some tired take on it. Fundraising. Fundraising for womxn founders. Fundraising for black founders. Fundraising for college students. Fundraising for healthcare startups. We talk so much about it. We run multiple capital-connected competitions, accelerators, and programs every single year. & Yet, founder’s are still complaining about there not being enough money.

We have to stop perpetuating this idea that money is what’s standing inbetween a founder and a billion dollar startup. You are standing in the way of you and a $100,000 startup. Just you. Money is not going to solve those early problems. Money comes next.

Complaining that investors won't back you is just another thing you’re doing that distracts you from building the thing they will.

Venture capital exists to fund high-risk, high-reward companies that can scale to hundreds of millions in revenue or more. If your idea can't do that, you shouldn't be raising VC anyway. & if you do want to build something with that kind of value, prove you’re the founder who can do it.

Stop treating fundraising as validation. Let your work be the product and your revenue be the proof.

Events

Open House at Genuine Work

Above the city’s most delicious hustle — Mashup Food Hall

Founders, innovators, and community builders—join us for an open house at Genuine Work, a new coworking and private-office space designed for people building real things, together.

Stop by on Thursday, January 22, between 4:30–7:30 PM to tour the space, meet the team, and connect with other entrepreneurs, creatives, and potential collaborators. We’ll also be offering founding membership rates and non-expiring day-pass packages, available exclusively to early supporters.

📍 Genuine Work (above Mashup Food Hall)
🍸️ Drinks + light bites provided
👉 RSVP here - https://www.addevent.com/event/lm5ppg0rg5t0

Vibe Code Night

​Don’t wanna f*ck around in Youtube alone? Come to VCN! Stef will be leading a little intro to AI type-along in the conference room. Now you really don’t have an excuse.

Whether you’re building a business, plotting your next big idea, or just curious what you can get AI to do for you—Vibe Code Night is a chance to hang out, get sh*t done, and meet great people while you’re at it.

Bring your own project and vibe alongside other founders, builders, and curious minds.

When: Wednesday, February 4
Where: Cinderblock, 1205 East Washington Street, Suite 111
RSVP here

Note’s on The Distill’s co-EICs: Jack Crowdis & Rachel Edenfield

Jack runs the newsletter, helps run KYX. He’s a career startup kid, past founder, and current operator. Weekly contributor. Always editor.

Rachel’s the Founder/CEO of venture-backed Swell, and a driver of KYX. Routinely delivers the city’s sharpest long-form startup advice. Always re-edits Jack’s edits (including this bio).

Know someone who should read this? Forward it, or send them this link.

That’s a wrap 🎬
Keep showing up 👊 
Keep shipping 🚢 
Peace, Pioneers ✌️