Bant Breen and How He Grew and Scaled Qnary Today

Bant Breen and How He Grew and Scaled Qnary

Sean: I mean, it’s the leaders dilemma, the founders dilemma. Yeah, we eat problems for breakfast and it just keeps going. But it’s also why we pay ourselves the most. Right?

Bant: Well, you know, that’s a really interesting one. You know, I actually suffered on that one, Sean. You know, I’ve read recently about how, you know, there’s a lot of startup folks that always say, like, make sure you pay yourself first and I get it. But I’ll be honest, I paid myself last, you know.

Sean: For how many years?

Bant: A good six years.

Sean: Good. Six years. Yeah, the first six.

Bant: I would say that I may paid myself the minimum. It’s an interesting one because any dollar that I had, I just wanted to make sure that I was reinvesting, making sure that we are putting it more back into the development. And you know, I’ve had arguments with VCs about this.

Bant: ‘You are like, no, no, no. You have – ‘ It’s a real dividing line on the philosophy on this. Some really believe that the founders have to pay themselves and others are like me, where I didn’t want to raise a lot of money early, because one of the challenges that I think your listeners might have is that they may feel pretty special when somebody comes and offers them a lot of money. But what they might not fully realize is that that money might come with maybe almost like I don’t want to say like poison pills, but like maybe challenges that aren’t ultimately good for the company and certainly not good for the founder.

Bant: Which means that like, you know, I’ll sit down with these companies that come out of these incubators and they’ll say, Oh, yeah, you know, we got we were given a $40 Million valuation and we’re crushing it, man. And I’m looking at them. I’m like, okay cool that sounds awesome. So tell me about the business. And they’ll say, ‘Well, you know, we got the product up and we’re, you know.’ ‘Do you have any customers?’ ‘Well, we don’t have any customers yet, but, you know, we got so-and-so company is using a free trial.’

Bant: And I’m listening to this and I’m thinking like, holy crap, they raised this money. They raised 2 million on a $40 million valuation. And I said, ‘So what’s your burn rate?’ They’re like, ‘Oh, well, you know, we’re probably going to have to do another raise in like six months.’ And I’m sitting there going like, ‘guys, you are f you’re fucked.’ Because like, you don’t celebrate the valuation basically. I guess that’s what I’m trying to tell you. Like don’t celebrate paper, celebrate customers, celebrate revenue, celebrate, you know, usage and engagement, celebrate that type of stuff, but don’t celebrate things that can be taken away from you in a down round. Right. And that’s the thing that I think these people don’t realize is that VCs are like, yeah, you know, these founders are smart. I’m going to knock them out in the next round, you know? Right. It’s a classic move.

Bant: And that’s kind of the stuff I’m thinking about is like founders have to be thoughtful of like what really matters. Keep their head to the grindstone, don’t burn through their cash, and don’t make a huge salary themselves. I would rather hit my goals before I pay myself a lot of money.