A profitable company that "doesn't count"

In the startup world, my company doesn't exist.

It has clients. It has income. It pays its bills. It's been around for ten years.

But it hasn't raised a round. So, technically, it doesn't count.

The scoreboard I'm not on

The startup world has a very clear scoreboard. How much you raised. From whom. At what valuation. How many people you hired. How fast you're burning.

That last one always makes me smile. Burning money as a sign of health. Imagine telling a plumber that.

On that scoreboard, Foxnice doesn't appear. We started in 2014 with 300 € and nobody else's money. No investors. No round. No team photo celebrating anything. Two people, Yeray and me, and clients who pay every month.

For a long time that made me feel slightly small. As if we were playing a different, lesser game. As if a company that pays its own way were just a startup that hadn't made it yet.

A company that pays for itself doesn't need anyone's permission to keep existing.

What "doesn't count" actually buys

Here's what I've come to see.

Not counting is very relaxing.

Nobody asks us for a growth curve. Nobody needs us to triple next year. When we decided to stop doing something that paid, like when we left a programme that was eating our focus, we didn't have to explain it to a board. We just had to agree between the two of us.

That's what patient money means to me. Money from clients doesn't come with a clock. Money from investors does.

And the price is real. We're slower. Our products move only as fast as our services can pay for them. We can't hire ahead of demand. We can't place ten bets and keep whichever one wins.

But we can afford to be wrong without explaining ourselves to anyone. I think that's worth more than it looks.

Different, not lesser

I'm not against startups. Some problems need a lot of money fast, and some people genuinely want to build something huge. Good for them. That's a real game.

It's just not the only one.

What bothers me a little is the assumption that it is. That a small, profitable company is a failed startup. That the goal of every business is to get big, and anything else is lack of ambition.

I have plenty of ambition. It just points somewhere else. I'd rather be free than big. Wanting to be the biggest is, I suspect, the fastest way to lose your freedom.

So I've made my peace with it. We're on a different scoreboard. One with fewer columns: clients who stay, money that comes in, and time that's still ours.

In the startup world, my company doesn't exist.

Which is fine. It doesn't need them to.

P.S. If anyone does want to invest, thank you. The answer is still no, but it's a very friendly no.