Bootstrapped, Not Funded: Fifteen Years of Building a Software Agency Without VC Money
In the autumn of 2019, a partner from a well-known Toronto venture fund flew out to meet me at a coffee shop in Mississauga. He had read about Ropstam in a Clutch list. He wanted to talk about a Series A. The math he sketched on the back of a napkin was generous; the check he was proposing would have been the largest single line of capital ever deposited in any account I had ever opened.
We Replaced 40% of Junior Developer & QA Work With AI. Here’s What Actually Happened.
It was the line for junior developer and junior QA hours, billed across all client projects, year over year. The number was down 41%. Not because we had lost clients ‚ revenue was up. Not because we had moved work offshore ‚ we were already offshore. The hours had simply disappeared. The work was getting done. Juniors were just doing less of it.
How to Choose a Software Development Partner
Last year, a Series B founder showed me an RFP he was about to send to seven agencies, including ours. I read it in three minutes and told him to throw it away. Not because the project was bad‚ AI it was a clean, well-funded build with a sensible timeline. I told him to throw it away because his RFP didn’t ask a single question that would actually predict whether a vendor could deliver. He was asking the questions agencies are trained to answer. He wasn’t asking the questions we hope nobody asks.