Ask HN: Raise VC/angel for tech services in growth vertical?
So here's the story - I work for a small 20 year old business in California with a blend of development consulting services, a cluster of specialized SaaS applications and a fully bootstrapped enterprise SaaS product that is revenue positive with growing MRR even during covid.
We cater to a vertical niche that analysts see being in the "safe" or "growth" category for the post-covid recovery, faster than even the rest of tech sector. I'm seeing even bigger opportunities for what we do in the rebound. We work globally too.
Our owner / CEO got the PPP loan very easily and we've found that banks seem unusually interested in us beyond the PPP loan. We recently found a product-market-fit for our enterprise product and are learning that we can reliably make the services side of the business profitable. And there's now a model to scale it..
Up until I joined the company all of our business was word of mouth referral. Great CTO but no COO, no CFO (the CEO is both). I'm the BD. No CMO or CPO either. So even modest investment in growth (marketing, sales, ops, product, finance) would bring significant ROI. It's just a services business so slower growth. Less hockey stick more like.. banana?
My question is - would it make sense to ride this wave of interest towards raising more capital than we actually need for covid runway? Is that even doable for a business that's 70% consulting services?
Could we raise VC/angel and use it for growth? Is this an opportunity? Should I be putting together fundraise plan and pitch decks?