That's definitely a possibility. I might be misjudging the situation.

The feedback we've been receiving is that VCs believe, that even with our growth, we can not beat our competition as they are much more heavily funded and have a lot of mindshare at the moment.

However, even with insane growth, if your CEO does not pitch with conviction, he will not convince a VC to invest. It's as much about passion and conviction than it is just about numbers.

Is this CEO making enough to get by on?

Often founder fatigue hits hardest when there is little money to do anything but try to recoup. Can he get a raise to increase his interest?

What kind of competition are we talking about?

Another startup that's VERY hot right now.

eh, the problems with looking at growth percentage is that the starting number? matters. I mean, a company that goes from $10,000 in year one to $14,000 the next year; sure, that's a lot of /growth/ but it's still years away from being self-supporting or likely to generate interest.

I know this because I spent... years in that zone. 40% year over year growth is easy when your revenue is that low, and is no indication that growth will continue once the company starts earning more revenue than the company would make if it just contracted out the engineering team to a profitable company.