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image of Why raising money is not always the answer: advice from a bootstrapped CEO (with Ilya Brotzky, CEO at Vanhack)
Saturday, December 5, 2020
39:21
minutes

Why raising money is not always the answer: advice from a bootstrapped CEO (with Ilya Brotzky, CEO at Vanhack)

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Episode Details

My first interview with a bootstrapped founder Ilya Brotzky from Vanhack. We are chatting about how he avoided raising money, mistakes he made early on with not vesting equity, and general advice to entrepreneurs.

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Episode Description

“Don’t chase the investor, chase the customer. You’ll have a more compelling story to tell”.


Key talking points:
  • Why entrepreneurs need to chase a business model and then investment, not the other way around
  • How Vanhack started as a company before becoming a marketplace
  • How Iliya changed his “be a nice guy” mentality


About Ilya

Ilya Brotzky is the CEO and Co-Founder of VanHack. He is building a company that promises the fastest way to hire tech talent. Today, employers can access a community of 200,000+ highly-qualified tech professionals from 100+ countries - the largest such community in the world! 

He has several articles on Forbes, Betakit & The Globe & Mail, he’s very active on Linkedin, with a network of 32,500 followers and raised very little money, around 120k - Ilya Brotzky. Great to have you on - welcome!

What is Off the Record with Aram?

Made by entrepreneurs for entrepreneurs. Off the Record is about the journey. It’s about fears, doubts, wins, and devastating losses. It’s about how people kept going no matter what to build their businesses, raise cash and hire the team. Here battle-tested CEOs and VCs share how they jumped out of the airplane and tried to assemble it on the way down.I hope you like it.

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