Some thoughts about @earnestcapital from some conversations I've had recently -

When I went full-time on @hostifi_net in January 2019 ($24K ARR) there was an opportunity cost

I stepped away from a career that was just getting started as a Security Analyst, a $95k/year salary

I sold my house, cut all of my personal expenses to be able to make the income transition.

Raising capital made that move a lot less stressful.

Money in the bank allowed me to think long term about the business and make better decisions early-on.

But back to that opportunity cost. At the end of 2019 HostiFi could have been at $24K ARR still (or less) and I would have decided to try to find a new job. I would have lost $71K+ of income that I could have made as a Security Analyst in 2019, and added a 1-year gap on my resume

The opportunity cost of potential lost income and a career left turn is real. As it turns out, of course, it was the right choice for me and I'm making more money and enjoy my work even more now. But I had no certainty then how long it would take or if it would work out at all.

Hindsight is 20/20. People ask why didn't I just bootstrap or get some debt instead of raising from @earnestcapital? "It would have been cheaper"

The mentorship itself is worth every dollar (I consider it my @earnestcapital School of Software & Business tuition), but I also think it was a good financial decision to raise

If I had debt instead of EC, and at the end of 2019 the business outlook was bad, and I decided to go back to a job, I would have lost both the income of ~$71K plus the debt owed, which would most likely be personal debt because the business wouldn't have qualified for a loan.

It's not impossible to just take on that risk, @tylertringas himself did it before, but it could have set my life/financial progress back a couple of years. That's not insignificant especially if you have other people in your life that you have to ask to take that path with you

@earnestcapital took that risk for me so I didn't have to worry about it. If at the end of 2019, HostiFi failed for some reason, instead of $186K ARR it was at $24K or $0 and I went back to a job in IT security, I hadn't lost any income potential and owed nothing

Those are my thoughts on why I think it was the best financial choice, and least risky especially at the early stage when the future is hard to see and so many things are uncertain