Caterpillar Cowboy

From the interview:

1. Invest heavily in the product; focusing on things that will make your customers love you and things that will keep your variable costs low when you scale. Make your product free so that you don’t have to pay for traditional marketing.
2. Raise a little bit of money and put all of it back into the product.
3. Slowly introduce paid features but always keep the “main” product free. Get to positive gross margins.
4. Raise a lot more money and put it all back into the product.
5. Grow until your gross margin makes you fully profitable.
6. Put all the profit back into the product.

People ask about exit strategies, but my goal has always been to get big enough and profitable enough that the last thing you’ll want to do is exit. That’s when you’ll exit.