Four AI Companies Absorbed 65% of Global VC. Here's the Bootstrapped Alternative

By Grace Kim

Four companies raised $188 billion in Q1 2026 — and that alone accounted for 65% of total global venture investment, according to Crunchbase data. Non-AI firms received just 20% of global VC funding in the same quarter, and deal count fell 30%. For most founders, the VC door is effectively closing.

Nacho De Marco has an answer built from experience. He scaled BairesDev into a multibillion-dollar business — one of the largest bootstrapped nearshoring companies worldwide — without a dollar of venture capital. In a piece for Crunchbase News, the founding GP of BDev Ventures and BairesDev chairman laid out the operating principles he says let a company grow when outside money isn't coming. The math is stark: if four deals swallow 65% of the pool, everyone else competes for scraps.

What replaces the fundraise?

Customers and revenue, De Marco argues. Many founders, he writes, "unknowingly treat fundraising as a measure of success" — but funding doesn't produce success on its own.

The numbers back him up. In B2B SaaS, companies with net revenue retention above 110% are valued at 2.4x the median, per a 2024 industry report cited in the piece. High retention, repeat purchases and sustained engagement are what valuations get built on. Each customer also supplies a feedback loop that compounds discipline over time. The takeaway: investor confidence follows customer trust, not the other way around.

Why do so many startups underprice?

Only 22% of B2B SaaS firms conduct rigorous pricing research, according to a study De Marco cites — and firms more often regret underpricing than overpricing. His read: setting prices too low "more often signals uncertainty rather than good value." Customers expect quality to show up in the price.

His advice is blunt. Find out what price your product can actually sustain at the outset, then raise quality if that price is too low. In services markets with established pricing norms, superior quality becomes the differentiator — and companies should resist chasing customers with ever-cheaper prices, which starts a race to the bottom. Price on value, or don't price at all.

Can you hire slow and still grow fast?

De Marco rejects hiring for speed over quality. Years ago he decided to evaluate only a small fraction of applicants and hire just the top 1% of talent at BairesDev. The payoff: the company could compete on delivery quality rather than price. "Keeping costs low is important, but skimping on talent is not a winning strategy," he writes. One great hire beats three mediocre ones.

Where does leverage come from without capital?

Process automation. One of BairesDev's best early decisions, De Marco says, was replacing manual hiring processes with proprietary machine-learning systems — technology that screens developer applications and then builds, matches and deploys teams for each client project. The systems cut evaluation costs, accelerated lead times and improved team quality. BairesDev built comparable systems for digital marketing, so growth wouldn't require proportional increases in overhead. In recruitment, sales or operations, he argues, automation creates the biggest growth drivers — a bootstrapped company's substitute for brute-force spending.

What does cash discipline actually look like?

De Marco's rule: operate as if cash is running out tomorrow. That means obsessing over unit economics, prioritizing revenue-driving activity, questioning every cost and cutting whatever isn't pulling its weight. Constraints, he writes, force leaders to automate workflows, streamline processes and invent new work models.

BairesDev proved it. Years before COVID-19, the company had built a remote-working model that streamlined operations and boosted scalability. When the pandemic made remote work mandatory, systems already in place gave the firm a competitive advantage — and, in turn, significant growth. Discipline isn't survival mode; it's positioning.

Is VC still the default path?

De Marco doesn't think it should be. "The past decade convinced many founders that venture capital was the default path to building a meaningful company," he writes. "Infusions of capital can accelerate growth, but they cannot create a great company from scratch." His long-term rule: stay married to the problem, not the solution — the most successful founders commit to solving problems rather than selling a product and chasing funding.

De Marco, who won an EY Entrepreneur Of The Year 2024 Bay Area Award and launched BDev Ventures in 2021 to accelerate B2B growth through a proprietary lead-generation platform, now invests in biotechnology and e-learning companies. If the Q1 2026 concentration continues — 65% of global venture dollars flowing to four AI players — his bootstrapped playbook stops being a contrarian take and becomes the only route most founders have left.