Tom Preston-Werner (CEO - GitHub) wrote a great blog post a few years ago entitled ‘Optimize for Happiness’, in which he describes the difference between optimizing for happiness and optimizing for profits. He went on to talk about the GitHub journey and how bootstrapping the company helped him to always “optimize for happiness”.

One of my favorite quotes from the piece is:

“VCs want to see quick success or quick failure. They are optimizing for money. There's nothing wrong with that as long as you want the same things they do. But if you're like me, then you care more about building a kickass product than you do about having a ten figure exit. If that's true, then maybe you should be optimizing for happiness. One way to do this is by bootstrapping a sustainable business with infinite runway. When there are fewer potentially catastrophic events on the horizon, you'll find yourself smiling a lot more often.”

Without comparing ourselves to GitHub (we will get there one day!), we try to have the same philosophy here at PagePicnic. We’ve spent 5 years building a solid product, a solid customer base and a solid revenue stream, and because we’ve been profitable almost from day one - we’ve never had to “optimize for money”, for fear of the runway.