Bootstrapping Our Way Forward
One of the main principles of Vassant is to do more with less. From inception, we prioritized using simple tools to build our wireframes, to code, and to manage our workflows. It's also how we organized our team.
Rather than persuading a group of investors about an initial visionary idea to fund a sprint to develop a product, we made the strategic decision to leverage our combined experience and optimized tools to keep our team lean. We also wanted to chart the direction of the company with a product that best represented our core mission from the beginning: to cut through unnecessary market noise and to streamline the investment decision-making process. At Vassant, we want to make investing seem like an even more accessible and feasible activity.
While pursuing a VC partner or applying for incubators is a standard startup method pursued by many successful founders, we are bootstrapping our way forward because the platform ecosystem we find ourselves in is rapidly changing. Distribution channels are opening and closing, forcing startups to innovate how they will get their apps to market. This is not to say that we will never pivot and pursue VC funding or apply for the Y Combinators of the world. We're simply suggesting that any platform could get a windfall of investment only to be uprooted by a low-cost competitor who tapped into a growth or product innovation method that leveraged non-traditional scaling tools or systems.
A "Deepseek Moment" can happen for anyone. And to add to the uncertainty/angst, new app submissions have jumped by over 50% from 2025 to 2026, with over 120,000 submissions on Google Play and App Store per month.
Making an app is easier than ever, but that coveted adoption will be a result of how well you can sell the value proposition.
In our marketing, Vassant is going back to the basics – email, business events, newsletters, referral programs, and more. Yes, we will be on social media. Yes, we plan to advertise on Google and other channels. But the way we pursue those strategies might look a little different than the standard approach we're all used to.
With our product, we'll be constantly looking in every direction for the diamond in the rough ideas, or the simple but consequential improvements, that have propelled so many visionary companies. That search will always be a customer-centric approach.
We will certainly follow up on whether bootstrapping worked in the long run, but we are satisfied that the conditions we find ourselves in currently force us to think unconventionally. That's what drives unique app development, hyperscaling, and entrepreneurialism.
Personal finance is facing a whirlwind of uncertainty, and the moment should be met accordingly with transparency, should promote accountability, and should discourage harmful practices.
Vassant intends to meet that moment by providing one more confidence measure against a sea change of disruptions.