Seedstrapping:
Why Your Next Round Might Be Your Worst Decision
By Rafael Karamainan
Founder and Managing Partner at Lendity
In 2015, building an MVP cost CHF 500K and 12 months. Today? CHF 50K and 6 weeks. Yet we still fund startups like it's 2015.
Here's the uncomfortable truth: Half the Series A rounds I see are solutions looking for problems. Founders sitting on CHF 5M, desperately trying to justify why they needed it, pivoting into oblivion because they raised too much, too early, for a thesis that needed CHF 200K to invalidate.
Welcome to the era of seedstrapping, where smart founders are discovering that a seed round plus radical discipline beats the traditional venture treadmill for 80% of businesses.
The Math to Run
Let's play with real numbers. Two founders, same idea, different paths:
Founder A: The Traditional Path
- Raises CHF 2M seed 25% dilution
- Burns CHF 150K/month exploring PMF
- Needs Series A in 12 months or dies
- Raises CHF 8M Series A 20% dilution
- Must grow 3x annually to justify valuation
before product-market fit
Founder B: The Seedstrapper
- Raises CHF 500K seed 12% dilution
- Burns CHF 30K/month using no-code tools
- Hits CHF 1M ARR in month 8
- Profitable by month 14 sustainable growth
- Raises growth capital when unit economics proven
with a validated business
Founder A has CHF 10M but owns 55% of a hypothesis.
Founder B has CHF 500K but owns 88% of a business.
The Technology Arbitrage Nobody's Talking About
📅 In 2015, you needed:
- CHF 100K for AWS infrastructure setup
- CHF 200K for a technical team
- CHF 150K for basic analytics and tooling
- 6–9 months to ship v1
⚡ In 2025, you need:
- CHF 500/month for better infrastructure (Vercel/Supabase)
- CHF 0 for no-code MVP (Lovable/V0)
- CHF 200/month for analytics suite
- 2–4 weeks to ship and test
💡 The Paradox
The cost of experimentation collapsed 90%, but funding amounts increased 300%. Make it make sense.
The 2021-2022 Hangover We're Still Nursing
Remember when every seed round was CHF 3M at a CHF 15M valuation? When Series A meant CHF 15M at CHF 75M+? We're still cleaning up that mess.
I know founders who raised CHF 15M in 2021 at nosebleed valuations (on top of previous rounds). Today they're profitable, growing 50% annually, worth maybe CHF 20M. Their common shares? Worthless until they 3x from here. They built solid businesses that would make any founder proud, except they'll never see a franc because they raised like they were building the next Spotify.
The cruel irony: Had they seedstrapped with CHF 1M, they'd be wealthy. Instead, they're stuck running zombie unicorns (?), too successful to shut down, too diluted to matter.
Opening 10 offices across Europe or winner-take-all dynamics is relevant? Not sure, this is about building a great CHF 50-100M business and actually owning enough of it to care.
The Seedstrapping Playbook
Minimum Viable Funding
Take just enough to validate core assumptions. For B2B SaaS, that’s usually CHF 300–500K. For marketplaces, maybe CHF 500K–1M. The goal isn’t runway, it’s finding the fastest path to customer revenue.
Use the Swiss Army approach: small team, multiple experiments, rapid pivots. Your burn rate should hurt a little. Comfort kills startups.
- ✔️ Small team, multiple experiments
- ✔️ Burn rate that hurts a little
- ✔️ Rapid pivots when needed
- ✔️ Focus on customer revenue
Revenue-Driven Development
Every feature gets justified by a paying customer. No exceptions. This constraint forces you to build what markets want, not what pitch decks promise.
When monthly revenue covers monthly burn. Most founders never experience this because they’re too busy spending Series A money on “growth.”
Key Milestone: First paying customers
Strategic Capital Deployment
Now you choose your path based on data, not dreams:
- 📈 Growing 20% MoM with clear unit economics?
Maybe you raise growth capital - 🛡️ Solid business at 5–10% MoM?
Congratulations, you own a real company - 💡 Need to pivot?
You still own 85%+ and have options
Key Milestone: Profitability or clear path to it
Want a clearer map of what funding options actually exist at this stage?
Explore the interactive Capital Stack to see:
- What each layer really is (in plain language)
- When to use it
- Who it’s for
- How it impacts founder ownership
When NOT to Seedstrap (The Winner-Take-All Exception)
Let's be intellectually honest. Some markets require blitzscaling:
- Network effects businesses (social, marketplaces)
- Markets with 18-month winner-take-all windows
- Deep tech with 3+ year development cycles
- Regulatory moats requiring upfront capital
If you're building the next Uber, ignore everything I just wrote. Raise CHF 50M and move fast.
But if you're building B2B SaaS, developer tools, or vertical marketplaces? Seedstrapping might be the difference between owning 15% or 70% of your life's work.
The Swiss Paradox
Here's what's beautifully ironic: Swiss culture celebrates precision, efficiency, and long-term thinking. Yet our startups copy Silicon Valley's "growth at all costs" playbook designed for a completely different game.
The most successful Swiss companies, from Rolex to Roche, grew methodically, profitably, with founders maintaining control. Maybe our startups should take notes from our corporations.
The Seedstrapping Principles
The Questions Nobody Asks
Before your next round, ask yourself:
- What would we build if we had 1/10th the budget?
- Could we hit profitability with current revenue growth?
- Are we raising because we need to or because we can?
- Would our customers notice if we stopped hiring for 6 months?
- Is our burn rate solving problems or creating them?
The Seedstrapping Manifiesto
The best companies aren't always the most funded. They're the most focused.
In an era where building costs plummeted but funding sizes exploded, seedstrapping isn't about being cheap. It's about recognizing that the scarce resource isn't capital, it's founder ownership and optionality.
Most founders believe they need CHF 5M to find product-market fit. But what if you only need CHF 500K and the discipline to use it wisely?
What if the next generation of great companies isn't built by whoever raises the most, but by whoever needs the least?
Your startup's story doesn't have to follow Silicon Valley's script. Sometimes the best round is the one you don't raise.
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