A few months ago, I started to write my master’s thesis about the question whether and how it is possible for small companies to scale without investors.

This question is relevant for us at Quobis because we firmly believe in the advantages of staying independent, such as putting all our focus on our customers and our product instead of getting distracted by raising or receiving high amounts of external funding.

Another advantage that we see in growing organically is that we can remain loyal to our values and make our decisions on our own. For instance, caring for one another and caring for our customers is in our DNA.

As our product manager Santiago reminded us some days ago, security and privacy are key elements in the development of communications software, and it is our responsibility towards our customers and the world we leave behind to be very conscious about this. Luckily, we are free enough to do what feels like the right thing to do.

This is especially important for us, since many of our customers are banks or healthcare providers with very high security standards. Being independent gives us the freedom to prioritise long-term relationships with them rather than short time success and quick revenue.

From my personal point of view as a salesperson, it is my responsibility to look at different ways how I can help improve the business results of our future and existing customers. Having a company behind me that’s able to focus on customers instead of investors helps me to reach that goal.

At the same time, we know that it’s crucial to keep growing and never run out of cash, so we don’t have to go out of business. Therefore, it is very encouraging for us to see that there are other companies that have successfully managed to bootstrap and even to scale globally on their own.

We’ve learnt some lessons by observing how these companies managed their challenges and I would like to share that knowledge with you.

If you feel like sharing any feedback or want to discuss about this, you are more than welcome to drop me a message via LinkedIn, Medium or email.