# Hey-oh! 🤠 I'm Josh Founder CEO of Referral Rock AMA

**URL:** <https://gorelay.co/t/hey-oh-im-josh-founder-ceo-of-referral-rock-ama/738>\
**Category:** AMAs\
**Tags:** bootstrapping, customer-centricity, culture, hiring, working-remotely, operating-principles\
**Created:** [May 5, 2022, 10:43pm UTC](https://gorelay.co/t/hey-oh-im-josh-founder-ceo-of-referral-rock-ama/738 "2022-05-05T22:43:55Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 11

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**Author:** ![jlogic](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex020/user_avatar/gorelay.co/jlogic/32/563_2.png) [@jlogic](https://gorelay.co/u/jlogic)\
**Post date:** [May 26, 2022, 2:31pm UTC](https://gorelay.co/t/hey-oh-im-josh-founder-ceo-of-referral-rock-ama/738/11 "2022-05-26T14:31:37Z")

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> [@rajaraman](#):
>
> People often talk about the inherent constraints of running a self-funded and profitable venture, but I’d love to know, in what ways have those choices enabled you to do more when compared to your previous venture-backed startup?

Not sure if I’d say “do more” but maybe less waste and being more intentional.

With self-funding we didn’t have pressure to grow, the pressure was internal vs external. When we had the external (investor backed) pressure of demo days, needing to raise… it put us in a way to be in a mode of “trying all kinds of things” to see what works. Which in itself is a great growth mentality, but too much pressure in that mode leads to desperation and waste. Maybe not enough patience to let an experiment run its course vs not thinking something is working then just moving on to the next.

Honestly, I don’t think Referral Rock would have made it as a VC backed business. A lot more was learned about our customers, market, and behaviors because of the slower pace we moved that had less pressure.

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