Introduction
When most people hear the words “tech startup”, they immediately think of venture capital. Angel rounds. Seed funding. Demo days. Founders scrambling to pitch investors, give away equity, and pray for that one lucky break that unlocks growth.
The startup story that we see over and over again in the media — the one that gets glamorised in tech podcasts, business news, and LinkedIn threads — goes something like this:
You have a “billion-dollar idea” and start raising a pre-seed round from anyone who’ll listen. Then you build a pitch deck, polish your elevator spiel, and start knocking on doors: angel investors, accelerators, VCs. You do the rounds at startup weekends and demo days, practicing your pitch in front of a panel of suits with folded arms and poker faces. You dream of standing in front of the Shark Tank judges, closing a deal in ten minutes, walking out with a giant cheque and a mentor who can “10x your growth”.
Raise money. Scale fast. Burn cash. Hire a team. Raise more money. And if you’re lucky, exit big.
But that was never my path.
I didn’t have investor connections. I’m a migrant from Johor Bahru, Malaysia, who moved to Australia as an undergrad to study design. My parents ran a small business supporting local businesses with accounting services, and the mere thought of accounting was enough to make me settle thousands of kilometres away from home.
I didn’t grow up with networks, mentors, or wealthy friends who could write early checks. Whatever connections I might’ve had through my parents’ business or from going to high school in Singapore disappeared the moment I moved to Melbourne.
I once attended an angel investor workshop, thinking maybe this was the path. But as soon as they started talking about revenue forecasts, legal structures, and term sheets, I felt completely out of my depth. Honestly, it was intimidating. And I worried it would suck the life out of what we were trying to build.
So I never seriously looked for investors — not out of pride, but because I didn’t think anyone would invest in us.
We had to find another way.
From Garage to Global
In 2015, my co-founder Chris and I pitched an idea for a software business. Since neither of us could code, there was no product. All we had were a few mockups, a painfully clear problem, and a niche we understood better than anyone.
We pitched it to a tiny online community, and people paid us before we wrote a single line of code.
From that moment on, we built entirely on our own terms.
No funding rounds. No board meetings. No investor updates. Just customers.
We reinvested every dollar we earned. Every cent from those early subscribers went straight back into marketing or paying engineers to build the product. We didn’t take a wage for the first three years.
We outsourced smart. From the start, we hired freelance customer support agents, engineers, and marketing consultants, while keeping full control of product design, UX, all customer communications, and every decision that shaped how our software worked and felt.
We hired carefully. In the early days, most of our team came from Upwork. Many of those freelancers stayed with us for years, raising families, growing their skills, and becoming experts in their fields.
Years later, our little side hustle had become a multi-million dollar SaaS company, serving thousands of paying customers in over 70 countries, and was ultimately acquired.
With neither big-tech résumés nor venture capital networks, we were just a wedding photographer and a UX designer who built software for Australian wedding photographers. We turned that niche into a global customer base and eventually sold to a US-based photography software company that saw strategic value in what we’d built.
We never raised a dollar of outside capital. We never gave away a single share. We never lost control.
Who The Book Is For
Screw the Investors isn’t a book about raising money. It’s a book about not needing it. It’s a blueprint for founders who want to build, scale, and sell their business while keeping full ownership and freedom.
This book is for:
Entrepreneurs with a great idea but no capital to fund it
Creative thinkers who want to build something real with their own skills, not someone else’s money
Founders who hate answering to investors and boards
Software builders who want to create products customers love, rave about, and recommend to their friends
Optimists who see criticism as fuel for growth, not failure
Adventurers chasing big growth and big profits without ever giving up the wheel
Just to be clear, investors aren’t the enemy. The right ones bring more than money. They offer experience, structure, resources, networks, accountability, and sometimes the one piece of advice that changes your growth trajectory. If you’re aiming to build a global company, you will need all those ingredients. But this book is about finding them through other means: paying customers, clever partnerships, talented freelancers, tight feedback loops, and a product that earns its keep.
This isn’t startup theory. It’s not Silicon Valley advice. It’s the real-world playbook we used to bootstrap a global SaaS company, exit on our terms, and keep 100% of the upside.
If you're tired of being told you need investors to succeed, this book is for you.
How to Use This Book
This book isn’t meant to be read cover to cover in one sitting like a novel. It’s a practical playbook, designed for you to come back to at different stages of your journey.
Each chapter focuses on a core principle we used to build, grow, and eventually sell our company without external investment. You’ll find real-world stories, practical strategies, lessons learned the hard way, and advice I wish someone had given me when I was starting out.
Some chapters are meant to inspire. Others are brutally tactical. Skip ahead if something’s more urgent. Revisit earlier chapters when you’re stuck. There’s no right order, only what’s useful to you right now.
Take what works. Ignore what doesn’t. And most importantly, build your business your way.
🚀 Make This Book Happen
1,000 pre-orders at $30 is what it takes to publish Screw the Investors. If this book resonates with you, don’t wait. Order now and help prove there’s another way to build a business.
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