From Bootstrapped to Acquired: A Founder’s Honest Postmortem

David Okafor spent six years building Ledgerly without raising outside money
and turned down two acquisition offers before finally saying yes to a third.
In this conversation, he walks through the year the company’s revenue
flatlined, the internal debate over whether to finally raise a round, and the
moment he realized the acquisition offer on the table wasn’t a rescue, it was
a choice.

He’s candid about what bootstrapping actually bought him: not just runway,
but the ability to say no. And he’s just as candid about what it cost — the
culture debt that built up while the team stayed lean, and how much longer
that took to unwind than any technical debt