The First Round That Lasts

(Image credit: Nalin's Linkedin Post)

For years, startup life had two clear lanes. You either raised round after round, or you bootstrapped with whatever you had.

Now, another lane is opening up. More founders are raising a single seed round and then never raising again. They build carefully, stay lean, and let customers carry them forward. People have started calling it seed-strapping.

It feels different from the other paths. Bootstrapping can be lonely and hard. The fundraising treadmill can be distracting. Seed-strapping sits in the middle. Enough capital to get started, but a focus on making the business work without depending on the next round.

The timing matters too. AI and better tools have made it cheaper to build. Go-to-market is lighter, more product-led. And the funding market itself has tightened, making Series A harder to reach. Together, these shifts have made seed-strapping not just possible, but exciting.

Storylane is one of the clearest examples. In 2021, they raised a seed round. They kept the team small, around 40 people. Four years later, they crossed $10M ARR while staying profitable.

As founder Nalin Senthamil wrote on LinkedIn today: “Excited to announce Storylane just hit $10M ARR… staying profitable without raising… The discipline of staying lean and profitable compounds.”

Zapier followed this path more than a decade ago. They raised about $1.2 million in seed funding in 2012, became profitable within two years, and never went back for a traditional Series A. Calendly did something similar. With just $550,000 in seed funding in 2014, it grew steadily and profitably until, years later, it was valued at over $3 billion before raising a larger round (TechCrunch). And now, a wave of AI-first startups is proving the same idea. Jenni.ai, for instance, reached $10M in revenue with less than $1M raised (Latka), while Pump scaled to a $15M run-rate with under $5M in capital (Tanay Jaipuria).

None of these stories make one path better than another. Fundraising works. Bootstrapping works. Seed-strapping is simply a new option that more founders are beginning to take seriously.

The old question was, “When is your Series A?”

The one that feels more relevant now is, “Could one round be enough?”

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/nalinpradeep_excited-to-announce-storylane-just-hit-10m-activity-7371085550365290496-1t7g