Should You Raise or Sell? Founders on the Funding Fork in the Road

Originally published in SeedStage Digest (Jan 2024)

Every founder dreams of product-market fit. But what happens when you hit it — and face a choice you never expected? Do you raise a round and scale… or sell the whole thing and move on?

We spoke to five founders who recently stood at this very fork — and chose different paths.

**The Scale-Up:**
“I was offered $1.2M for my project after it hit $15K MRR,” said Eli Moran, who built a simple collaboration tool for remote agencies. “I turned it down and raised $400K from friends of the product instead. I’m glad I did — now it’s at $50K MRR.”

**The Clean Exit:**
For others, selling is the dream. “I bootstrapped my app for 18 months, got a $180K buyout offer, and took it,” said a founder who preferred to stay anonymous. “I was tired. I wanted to build something new, and the deal gave me space.”

**The Hybrid Path:**
Then there are those who raise *and* sell a piece. “We structured a partial buyout where I took some money off the table but kept a majority stake,” said Clara Zhou, founder of a niche B2B data dashboard. “It gave me peace of mind — and fuel to keep going.”

What drives the decision? For most, it’s less about money than psychology: appetite for risk, energy level, personal runway.

There’s no right answer — just tradeoffs. The important thing, all five founders agreed, is recognizing that hitting traction doesn’t mean following someone else’s playbook.

“Once you prove your idea, everyone tells you what you *should* do,” said Moran. “Just remember: no one else has your context.”