[HN Gopher] We bootstrapped to $11M in ARR
___________________________________________________________________
We bootstrapped to $11M in ARR
Author : mh_
Score : 354 points
Date : 2021-03-18 04:48 UTC (18 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (blog.thinkst.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (blog.thinkst.com)
| mizzao wrote:
| Is it possible to bootstrap a consumer startup in the same way as
| a B2B SaaS? Seems a lot harder, given that revenue from day one
| is not easy.
| artichikin wrote:
| Yes -- we've been bootstrapping our diet tracker cronometer for
| the last 10 years. It's a much slower pace, but nice growing &
| operating on own terms. It took the first five years before I
| could quit my regular job -- but now hitting $3M ARR. Designed
| an awesome workplace in a ski town and have been slowly
| recruiting other ski-bum / devs to our way of life.
| tfang17 wrote:
| I'm the cofounder of Eureka Surveys. We are a bootstrapped
| consumer startup with 1M+ users and profitable.
| jeffreyrogers wrote:
| They definitely exist. Things like pinboard.in for example.
| mh- wrote:
| Congrats fellow mh!
| newbie578 wrote:
| I got a question for which I don't see the answer in the article.
|
| What about employee compensation? Is it just a fixed salary or?
| Since I do not see any mention of going public in the article, so
| I'm curious what is the motivation for employees.
| mh_ wrote:
| We do average to above average salaries, and all share a profit
| share bonus at the end of the year. Everyone gets a company
| credit card to buy books/tech needed to do their jobs. Everyone
| gets side benefits like an audible subscription, other mini
| stipends.
|
| It's worth noting that we couldn't always do this (starting off
| we just went with "decent salaries and smart ppl to work
| with").
|
| We try to keep doing this right so that we all do well as the
| company does.
| yboris wrote:
| I love the _Giving back_ section <3
|
| > over the past 2 years have managed to donate over a million
| dollars to local charities
|
| I wish more companies were doing this. There are many already --
| consider joining the _Fouders Pledge_ https://founderspledge.com/
| if you're thinking of doing the same.
| wly_cdgr wrote:
| Great product, great company, terrible parties
| motohagiography wrote:
| I've used the canary tokens and they are probably the most
| elegant security tool I've seen in the business. What a pleasure
| to read.
| eric4smith wrote:
| The vast majority of businesses....
|
| 1. Are outside the valley
|
| 2. Started with minimal or no funding
|
| 3. Hire a ton of employees overall
|
| 4. Give their founders comfortable lives.
|
| 5. Do their thing very quietly without anyone really knowing.
|
| 6. You've never heard about.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| Silicon Valley is a blind search algorithm for novel scaling
| advantages from digitisation.
|
| These advantages exist for mass retail. The medium-sized
| businesses who tried to compete with Walmart and Amazon had to
| adapt fast or fail. These advantages do not (EDIT: have not
| been shown to) exist for commercial real estate; WeWork was a
| dud. Most American commerce is, and should be, in the hands of
| these medium-sized businesses, if for nothing else than
| resilience and local optimisation.
|
| My worry is the advantage of centralising customer data is too
| general. That lets a single entity exert broad scaling
| advantage, which is scary and inefficient. I increasingly think
| this should be a measure for antitrust enforcement: does a
| company possess an edge that gives it a competitive advantage
| in almost any market it tries to compete in. If so, it's an
| economic nerve bundle and at the very least needs to be
| regulated.
| daniellarusso wrote:
| There is also the public health issue.
|
| Many Walmarts were shutdown for multiple days to disinfect
| the store after an excessive number of employees tested
| positive for COVID.
|
| Mom and pop stores would reduce spread simply because there
| is less concentration of people.
| sub7 wrote:
| WeWork is not done and has been a big win for everyone
| involved
| jack_riminton wrote:
| Apart from Softbank?
| peteretep wrote:
| > These advantages do not for commercial real estate; WeWork
| was a dud
|
| WeWork was a dud. That doesn't show in any way that these
| advantages can't work for commercial real estate, just that
| nobody's done it yet.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| Quite fair. Edited.
| habosa wrote:
| The SV startup business model is basically: "I've identified a
| profitable industry which seems 'unoptimized' ... if I used VC
| funding to outflank every traditional player in this industry
| would there be room for one billionaire? And could that
| billionaire be me?"
| melomal wrote:
| >5. Do their thing very quietly without anyone really knowing.
|
| 6. You've never heard about.
|
| I love going to industrial estates and checking out what is
| going on in there for this exact reason. CNC machine, 3D
| printing, endless engineering all of which will never be
| appreciated or create a fan boy cult but they will keep many,
| many other businesses operational and growing.
|
| These places actually build things too, real tangible things
| that have requirements and so forth.
| jbverschoor wrote:
| Lifestyle businesses are something demonic in the valley
| MangoCoffee wrote:
| there are ton of successful business outside of silicon valley
| but Wonder kids like Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook) make better
| headline to sell news.
| divbzero wrote:
| I'd love to hear more of these stories, but suspect _5. Do
| their thing very quietly_ is in the spirit of many of these
| businesses.
| ZephyrBlu wrote:
| I was looking for a different example from @patio11, but this
| one will have to do:
| https://twitter.com/patio11/status/701765026286206976
| mmaunder wrote:
| It is. And there is always a reason private companies post
| their numbers. Unless there's a strong reason to do it, it is
| a better strategic move to keep them private.
| flukus wrote:
| At least for software, the vast majority are in some sort of
| niche you've either never heard of or thought about. Software
| for managing operating theater procedures, software for
| managing doctors/dentists, software for managing money
| exchanges, software for managing legal conveyancing, software
| for managing schools, etc. Those are examples from places
| that I've worked that were purely software shops, add to that
| just about any sizeable company in any industry that have
| software developers, everything from you pet food brand to
| your toothbrush manufacturer likely started outside of
| silicon valley, most without little to no venture capital.
|
| They used to be called micro independent software vendors
| (mISV) and before the silicon valley gold rush this was the
| dream of young entrepreneurs.
| spullara wrote:
| Those are absolutely terrible companies for software
| developers to work for though. I have several family
| members that work for them. If you want average pay and the
| owners to take all the profits, go for it. Otherwise, work
| for FAANG, a great startup or a finance company (hedge fund
| or investment bank).
| eric4smith wrote:
| Most companies are average to above average pay. FAANG's
| are an aberration, not the norm.
| barry-cotter wrote:
| But they employ a _lot_ of software engineers. Amazon
| employs ~150,000 if I remember right.
| vram22 wrote:
| Nit: With some companies paying below average, too, by
| the very definition of the term 'average', and also
| because the sizeable handful of FAANG companies skews the
| average even higher.
| boatsie wrote:
| I think that is sort of the point, though. If you are
| able to work/succeed at FAANG, you could build software
| in these niches quite profitably, because the competition
| is likely not all that good.
| newman8r wrote:
| This is why I've been putting more energy into networking
| and finding the right partners - people who understand
| these niche problems, have an existing network to sell the
| solutions to and just need the technical team to build and
| iterate on the product.
|
| Brainstorming is still important to me, but I'd rather
| brainstorm with a specialist. If any HNers fit the bill,
| please do send an email.
| bootstrapper101 wrote:
| I run one of these companies. USD 50M+ ARR, USD 20M+ profit. 3
| people company.
|
| Could grow 10x if we want to. But we are enjoying staying low
| and enjoying our family lives.
|
| Excellent article by the Canary guys. They seem like really
| honest people.
|
| We didn't raise any money. Only focus was how to do faster
| iterations. By the time 25 of my ideas didn't succeed, every
| iteration became very fast. Idea to launch in 3 months. Happy
| to answer any questions.
|
| Looks like this is dead. Happy to answer any questions @dang !
| Once kids are in high school, maybe will try something bigger!
| breck wrote:
| Are there any small public companies (<50 employees) you
| admire?
| bootstrapper101 wrote:
| I don't know employee strength of many companies. Some
| companies which feel relatively small that I like are:
| 1Password (agilebits), Protonmail, Little Snitch (Objective
| Development).
|
| PS: I am getting throttled by HN algorithms. If someone can
| help get me unthrottled I will get around to answering all
| the questions.
| navanchauhan wrote:
| That is probably because you have a new account.
|
| Try contacting hn on their email.
| warent wrote:
| Am I the only one reading a significant amount of ego and
| humblebrag from this post? It's pretty off-putting and
| distracting from where there could be value.
| jacquesm wrote:
| > Am I the only one reading a significant amount of ego and
| humblebrag from this post?
|
| Yes.
| bootstrapper101 wrote:
| I am really sorry it came that way. It's been a long day.
|
| Thought this was a good opportunity to share my learnings
| and answer any questions. If there is any way I could help
| answer any question, I would love to!
| tebbers wrote:
| Don't apologise. I didn't get a humblebrag tone from your
| posts at all.
| wuschel wrote:
| Hi, no worries, we all communicate with text here...
| misunderstandings happen regularly with a fraction users
| you interact with.
|
| Congratulations on your success!
|
| Here are some questions:
|
| Q1. What was the prerequisite for your success
| (product/service, team, market)?
|
| Q2 What technology space are you in? (Digital/brand vs
| high-tech)?
|
| Q3 What were your difficultis when iterating over your
| product concepts, and what was the iteration frequency?
|
| Q4 How long did it take to take off?
|
| Would love to chat at some point, or connect. My email is
| the profile.
| bootstrapper101 wrote:
| I don't think that I can guarantee success. There was
| some angle of luck involved. However over time, because I
| am getting faster, I am getting more shots at the game.
| Earlier I could play one game over 2 years and make many
| mistake (which now look obvious to me) along the way. Now
| I can play multiple games every year. So that helps you
| build your own luck to some extent.
|
| > Q1. What was the prerequisite for your success
| (product/service, team, market)?
|
| Drive and desire of learn would probably be biggest. No
| task is good or bad: If something has to be done it has
| to be done.
|
| Acquiring more skills apart from programming: devops,
| product, hiring, management, sales, marketing, legal,
| accounting. This help you develop holistic view of your
| product and company.
|
| > Q2 What technology space are you in? (Digital/brand vs
| high-tech)?
|
| Product for end consumer. The end product itself is not
| very high tech. I don't know a humble way to say it - but
| the tech powering the company is really well architected
| and managed.
|
| > Q3 What were your difficultis when iterating over your
| product concepts, and what was the iteration frequency?
|
| This could be a 5000 word reply. In the end difficulties
| don't matter. Brutally prioritize and keep at it till you
| overcome it. Know when to cut your losses and move on.
|
| > Q4 How long did it take to take off?
|
| I had 3 products which saw good adoption. Only the
| current one is financially successful. Each of those took
| 1-2 months to build and we knew within a week that it was
| going to be successful.
| wuschel wrote:
| Thank you for taking the time to reply! :)
| [deleted]
| nmfisher wrote:
| No, I didn't get that impression at all.
| TheMagicHorsey wrote:
| I didn't read any such tone. He's quite fact oriented.
|
| You may want to introspect into what you are bringing into
| the reading as your own context.
| warent wrote:
| it's a combination of it being a brand new (potentially
| throwaway) account, me potentially misunderstanding what
| is meant by claiming 20m annual profit for 3 people is
| "staying low", and the limits of text communication
| bootstrapper101 wrote:
| No worries.
|
| Glad that we could figure this out like reasonable
| adults.
| nonane wrote:
| What is your preferred tech stack for quick iteration of
| ideas?
| practicalpants wrote:
| Process question: What specifically would you do to get early
| customers or to market the mvp? How did this change over the
| 25 attempts?
|
| What was your criteria for "this one has failed let's do
| another one"?
| bootstrapper101 wrote:
| My other account (bootstrapper101) got throttled. Maybe
| @dang can help merge this tomorrow.
|
| I could maybe spend 5000 words and still not be able to say
| all I want to say about this.
|
| The ideas were all over the place: Social, Enterprise,
| Consumer, Saas.
|
| I learnt over time that once you have failed so many times,
| you start avoiding obvious mistakes. Mistakes like
| polishing your app before launch, wasting time on PR,
| building too many features, not spending enough time
| qualifying your users.
|
| Once you build enough products you start knowing the impact
| of things like:
|
| 1. Marketplace products: supplier and consumer chicken and
| egg problem)
|
| 2. Single player mode: you don't need your friends to be on
| the app and you can get immediate value as soon as you
| start.
|
| 3. Social products: Where degree matters. Most IM products
| can provide a lot of value of if 1-3 of your close friends
| are on it. But products like Facebook needs 50+ friends,
| Twitter needs strangers.
|
| 4. See if you LTV (life time value) > CAC (customer
| acquisition cost) + Operation cost + Development cost
|
| 5. Customer acquisition strategies: Programmatic (ads,
| crawler), Sales team, Referral, Content marketing
|
| There are so many other small things. These concepts are
| like different lego pieces and over time you find which one
| works better for your product and you use the right pieces.
|
| Biggest takeaway was how to do faster iteration, brutally
| prioritize and automate everything. Everything else is
| learning along the way!
| everybodyknows wrote:
| Could you tell us a bit about compensation/ownership for
| your other two on staff?
| xuki wrote:
| How do you handle support with just 3 people? I imagine at
| that scale you either have a lot of customers, or small
| number of customers with very specific needs.
| sigil wrote:
| Are you in a large market with competitors but still plenty
| of room, or have you more or less cornered a smaller one?
| weakwire wrote:
| This thread totally hijacked the OP. Extremely interesting.
| artemonster wrote:
| How did you stumble on all the ideas to try? I am at a point
| that I want to try literally _anything_ , but its is
| exceptionally hard to judge success chances if the target
| niche is absolutely outside your domain/experience. How did
| you find all these 20 ideas?
| austinjp wrote:
| Personally I have at least one business idea every day,
| probably due to some neuro-divergence issues. The problem
| is determining which are worth pursuing.
|
| By their own admission, OP's 20+ ideas didn't work.
|
| You only need one, it just has to be the right one :)
|
| Snark aside, I guess receptivity to novelty is critical
| when pivoting. At that point, though, the pivot should be
| based on data. Creativity is still required, constrained by
| the data. I believe that's more amenable to being
| 'engineered' rather than just waiting for the muse to
| arrive.
| josephg wrote:
| I have a friend who made a project out of brainstorming 5
| project ideas every day. They had to be stuff he could
| realistically build (physically or with code). Sometimes
| he would riff off a single idea - some problem he wanted
| solved. Other times he just sort of free associated.
|
| He said it was hard at first, but it got easier over
| time. His ideas didn't dry up. They multiplied.
| jeffreyrogers wrote:
| A couple of years ago I started writing down ideas
| whenever they popped into my head. Didn't really make a
| conscious effort to brainstorm them or anything, but
| after a while they start becoming a frequent thing. I
| probably get a couple a week and now have a really long
| list of things. Some are obviously bad, others require
| too much outside knowledge or equipment I don't have, but
| maybe 10-20% are promising and doable by me.
|
| Honestly the hardest thing is picking one thing to focus
| on for an extended amount of time. It's tempting to
| prototype something and then get excited by the next idea
| and never fully finish what you were working on. I think
| this is just part of how humans are. I know a guy who
| worked on rockets and says it got boring after a couple
| of years.
| bootstrapper101 wrote:
| Nothing beats just getting down and building something
| end to end. As you do it more and more, you get better
| and faster.
|
| I just came up with an analogy of trying to be successful
| at startup: Imagine someone who is just born in
| prehistoric rugged terrain who wants to reach some
| magical place. You don't know even how to crawl. There is
| some food and clues all over the place about how to reach
| the magical place. You have a magic button which can take
| you to slave house (corporate life). You could
| potentially come back from Corporate life to the startup
| life, but you would be bruised and would have picked bad
| skills which you know needs to forget.
|
| You immediate focus should be gaining skills and pace.
| You will start by learning to crawl, walk, jump, climb,
| track your path, get better instincts, find food, look
| for clues, follow clues.
|
| With more tries, you will get better at these. You will
| be better at navigating the terrain. You will get better
| heuristics which will determine your success.
|
| Many time either people looking for a magic solution.
| This is equivalent to someone in this situation thinking
| if they can roll downhill and hope to be within crawling
| space of the magical space. It doesn't work that way.
| Some people do get lucky but most don't.
|
| Any many times people are procrastinating. Which is like
| someone waiting at the edge of this magical world
| figuring out whether to make a plunge.
|
| Just get started. You will figure out along the way. Make
| sure you have a good plan on health and finances!
| moneywoes wrote:
| > You immediate focus should be gaining skills and pace.
| You will start by learning to crawl, walk, jump, climb,
| track your path, get better instincts, find food, look
| for clues, follow clues.
|
| RE my earlier question I'd really appreciate it if you
| could provide more insight into this.
|
| So far I've been building MVPs in Django ( quick and
| easy) CRUD mainly, trying to improve copy writing,
| building better communication skills ( being more
| succinct), learning about SEO ( evergreen for marketing)
| and building paid marketing campaigns through FB. What
| else would you suggest?
| bootstrapper101 wrote:
| I feel that it's better to learn skills as a part of
| getting traction vs try to acquire skills in vacuum.
|
| So have a razor sharp focus on building and adoption. If
| things are going great then cool. If not, introspect and
| seek advice till you figure out how to make progress. You
| will acquire skills along the way.
|
| There is no magic bullet. Naval said that for success you
| need Product, Market, Founder fit. I would suggest go
| through his podcast "How to get rich".
| jeffreyrogers wrote:
| Thanks, that's a helpful analogy. I appreciate you taking
| the time to comment in this thread, your posts have been
| really informative/useful.
| bootstrapper101 wrote:
| Don't over think. Just start building anything that you
| feel could be useful to someone.
|
| Don't fall in love with the idea. The idea you start with
| will never be the idea when you are successful. It will
| evolve or likely you will pivot to another related idea.
| Facebook today isn't what it started with. Flickr and Slack
| started as gaming companies. Google today is very different
| from what they started with.
|
| It would help if you pick a good space. Ideally something
| which you know about, is big enough that there would be
| enough users.
|
| And make sure you enjoy the process of going for it. If you
| set out with a sole goal to get rich and get famous, it can
| be very demotivating when things are not going your way.
| AussieWog93 wrote:
| I've seen people take the advice of "build something that
| could be useful to someone" the wrong way so many times.
| That "someone" shouldn't be an abstract, hypothetical
| customer but a group of people that contains someone you
| intimately know, such as a close friend, partner or
| yourself. I think "build something that would be useful
| to someone that you personally know, and many others like
| them" is a much more concrete way to think about the
| problem, and will enable you to achieve success with high
| probability.
|
| (Just as a disclaimer, I started earning enough income
| from side projects for both my wife and myself to quit
| our full-time jobs about a year ago and start a family,
| but we're nowhere near the multi-millions in yearly
| profit that OP or bootstrapper10x are.)
| bootstrapper101 wrote:
| This is excellent advice. You should know and understand
| who your customer are. Otherwise you won't even know what
| to build. Or you will build the wrong product and won't
| get any feedback.
|
| Congrats on your journey and best of luck for the future!
| AussieWog93 wrote:
| Thanks mate, really appreciate the encouragement from
| someone who's made it.
| BackBlast wrote:
| I spent years and years in the "I just need a good idea"
| rut. In reality they are everywhere. Every spreadsheet
| sitting on a company computer, doing some work no other
| system will do, is a potential SaaS niche.
|
| It does help to elevate your exposure to industries and
| companies. Go to trade shows for your hobbies, learn their
| pain points. Consider switching jobs more frequently, or
| find some work at a consulting firm which can get you on a
| different contract every few months. Seeing the inside of
| more companies will give you more exposure and will help
| you see where they struggle.
|
| Working on an idea (even a bad one!), doing the deep dive,
| will result in logical branches out to other ideas. You
| need to work on your execution anyway, because the best
| idea in the world won't take you far if you fail to
| deliver.
|
| Since I started trying to build my ideas, I find that I
| have far more than I could possibly build myself.
| radihuq wrote:
| How much of the $30M expenditure do you spend on marketing?
| bootstrapper101 wrote:
| 70% of expenses are marketing.
| akritrime wrote:
| What are your skillsets? How did you get there?
| byefruit wrote:
| How did you ensure you'd given each iteration a proper go?
| Are there any tips you can share for validating them that
| were effective?
| bootstrapper101 wrote:
| We kept an iteration going as long as we saw a reasonable
| and viable path to keep growing the business.
|
| One of the product was consumer and had a hockey stick
| growth curve obvious in the first week. So it was obvious
| to keep going on.
|
| Another product was profitable and we could acquire new
| customers through advertising. So it was obvious to keep
| going on.
|
| For the one's that didn't do good, initially I wasted a lot
| of time doing things which won't meaningfully help with
| adoption. Some of them are:
|
| 1. Building too many features.
|
| 2. Building too many platforms at launch.
|
| 3. Spending time on PR
|
| 4. Figuring out the perfect font for the website.
|
| 5. UI polish.
|
| Over time you develop better heuristics. You can't ever be
| fully right but you just get somewhat better judgement.
| [deleted]
| byefruit wrote:
| Super interesting. Thank you.
| newusertoday wrote:
| what is the skillset of 3 people? 1 product, 1 sale/market, 1
| developer or something else? how complex is the product in
| terms of technology?
| bootstrapper101 wrote:
| I will try to answer multiple questions here because I am
| being throttled:
|
| > How do you handle support with just 3 people? I imagine
| at that scale you either have a lot of customers, or small
| number of customers with very specific needs.
|
| We are highly automated. Very very few queries get through
| and they are contracted out.
|
| > what is the skillset of 3 people? 1 product, 1
| sale/market, 1 developer or something else? how complex is
| the product in terms of technology?
|
| 2 developers (I am 1 of them) and 1 person for everything
| else.
|
| > Are you in a large market with competitors but still
| plenty of room, or have you more or less cornered a smaller
| one?
|
| It's a large market with 20+ competitors. Because our
| operational costs are so low and we are highly automated we
| could take over big chunk of business from our competitors.
| Essentially the dynamic is like Altavista vs Google.
|
| Our competitors sometimes do some really dark patterns. I
| am realizing that almost all companies do that (Google
| incognito tracking, Facebook charging kids in games etc).
| Somehow I can't get myself to do that. So I am thinking of
| moving to Saas so that I can deal with mature customers and
| ideally provide them value.
|
| > What are your skillsets? How did you get there?
|
| I am a programmer as my core skill. But I have also played
| product, marketing, sales, hiring through my career. To get
| good a these, I worked in my jobs as if I was the owner.
| That helped get me experience faster.
|
| If people want to do a startup, best advice for them would
| be join a startup with good team at an early stage. Bonus
| points if that startup is in a space you like. Learn, make
| good friends and then then do your own startup.
|
| I really recommend Naval's "How to get rich" podcast. It's
| as if he is talking about my life. He decided to move to
| more investing, but I still like building stuff myself.
|
| > What distinguished the successful attempts from the
| unsuccessful ones? > How did you know when it was time to
| move on?
|
| If I don't know how to keep growing the business, it's a
| dead-end and time to move on.
| frongpik wrote:
| How did you get to the decision makers to pitch your idea?
| Unless you were already well connected, I presume it wasn't
| easy to get attention from the right people.
| bootstrapper101 wrote:
| I pitched my ideas just twice and got some funding for
| them.
|
| However either my approach was wrong or I wasn't working
| with the right people. I felt that funding was too big of a
| waste of time. Without traction, everything I did was being
| second guessed. And too much time was being wasted
| pitching.
|
| I haven't raised any money for 20+ of my ideas including
| the current one. But I can imagine it would be easier for
| me to raise money on better terms in future!
|
| I use the nanny vs parent analogy for involvement with a
| product.
|
| When you are working for someone else, you are a nanny. The
| product isn't your baby. Be careful how much you get
| invested. If you get sentimental and attached you will end
| up hurting yourself.
|
| If you own your company, it's like being the parent. You
| have sole responsibility but except government no one else
| can interfere.
|
| VC funded business can be like a wild ride. You may start
| as a parent, but you will eventually end up as a nanny. In
| some rare cases you can have majority voting rights till
| the end. Only famous case for that I know is Facebook.
| nj999999 wrote:
| This sounds awesome. Link to the product? Love seeing these
| kinds of businesses thrive.
| baxtr wrote:
| Super interesting. How did you make money when you were
| testing 25 ideas? How did you and your family survive and how
| did you finance the iterations?
|
| 25 ideas and 3 months equals 6 years? So did you try that
| long to find a sticking idea?
| bootstrapper101 wrote:
| Timeline:
|
| 7 years: Work for someone else. Try 5 ideas on the side.
| Save money
|
| 3 years: Tried 2 ideas and spent all the money
|
| 4 years: Worked for someone else. Tried 20 ideas on the
| side. Last became profitable and then I quit.
|
| It was really tough. I was working 14 hours every day
| between full time job and my other ideas.
|
| I grew up really poor, so had to do it the hard way. But I
| had an overwhelming desire to not work for someone else.
| That kept me going.
|
| We delayed having kids because of this and that is my
| biggest regret.
| YetAnotherNick wrote:
| > Could grow 10x if we want to. But we are enjoying
| staying low and enjoying our family lives.
|
| > I was working 14 hours every day between full time job
| and my other ideas. We delayed having kids because of
| this and that is my biggest regret.
|
| I know it's your choice but haven't you still sacrificed
| your personal life, so why not try to become 10x?
| bootstrapper101 wrote:
| I don't spend the money I already make. Not sure what I
| would do with 10x money.
|
| 1% ungrateful complaining consumer out of 1 million users
| are 10k users. I don't like dealing with them. At 10x the
| business they might become 100k or more. I would rather
| have 10k high paying Saas customers and weed out the
| ungrateful ones there but to their face.
|
| Currently we are working above the board with no dark
| patterns. We have one of the best customer service and
| refund policies across possibly all consumer internet
| companies. Our competitors have lot of dark patterns. To
| grow 10k, we might need to do shittier things which I
| don't want to.
|
| I know there are lot of founders and executives out there
| who would be fine doing dark patterns for growth. But I
| am not and maybe that is my shortcoming and which is why
| I didn't want to grow in the Corporate ladder. If I own
| the company, I can have final say on these things.
| throwaway11002 wrote:
| Can I ask how you're handling customer service? I'm a
| one-man company and it's the most draining part of my
| business. It's so tempting to outsource first line
| support but I also feel there's some value in answering
| all the emails yourself because you know your customers'
| needs.
|
| And I'm not sure how to even outsource support. Do I just
| hire someone part-time from some gig website and pay them
| for X hours/week? I think one dedicated customer support
| person would do wonders for my business but it would
| require about ~5-10 hours of work per week. And customer
| support is something you get better at the longer you do
| it, so I don't want to constantly hire replacements,
| especially if it's going to be just one person doing
| support.
| tfang17 wrote:
| We've had good luck at Eureka Surveys with hiring in the
| Philippines. Check out my thread on it here:
| https://twitter.com/t0mstah/status/1356296043009253382
| daniellarusso wrote:
| Do you have an FAQ that is part of your first auto-reply
| when somebody contacts support?
|
| Do you have helpdesk software?
|
| Are you using an answering service/receptionist to answer
| calls and then send the support issue to your support
| email or software?
|
| Make as much as you can self-service for your users.
|
| Have brief videos explaining your solution, so you can
| easily reply with a link to the video and ask them to
| follow up with you if they have more questions.
|
| Keep track of both issue count and resolution time.
|
| You may find it better to automate something you only do
| 4 times a month, but takes 8 hours, versus something you
| do 8 times per day, but only takes 5 seconds.
|
| Finally, keep track of support issues by type, so you can
| see emerging trends and find your biggest pain points (#
| of tickets with a particular issue * median resolution
| time of particular issue).
| bootstrapper101 wrote:
| These are great tips. We do most of these.
|
| Automate everything possible.
|
| If you still can't manage and need human support, hire
| someone in India/Philippines part time, treat them like a
| valued employee, build a relationship.
| digaozao wrote:
| Congratulations for the integrity. Hard to find online
| businesses totally honest without dark patterns
| newbie578 wrote:
| Congrats to you for finally succeeding! Just that your
| way of climbing doesn't sound quite fun. Spending 7 years
| working 14 hours a day, full of stress, and fail 20 times
| straight? That sounds like a recipe for disaster. I
| wonder how many people are doing the same things you were
| doing and are still not successful...
|
| I got a simple question, was it worth it and what would
| you change?
| bootstrapper101 wrote:
| I love building products. The financial success was a
| side product.
|
| I should have qualified my statement about failures
| better.
|
| Current one: Financially successful for me.
|
| Another one: Financially successful but got screwed over.
|
| Another one: Was very successful with adoption, but
| timing got wrong and didn't become financially
| successful.
|
| 2 others: Moderate success but financially not
| successful.
|
| It was really tough, but I enjoyed the process. I love
| building products. I have a few really good ideas, but
| don't have bandwidth for them right now. I would keep
| building products for my love of it.
|
| My long term goal is to leave the world a better place.
| It took 10+ years to get to the point that I can work on
| anything I want to without worrying about bills.
|
| I regret delaying having kids. I regret not spending
| enough time with family and friends. I wish I had taken
| better care of my health. But right now I get to spend
| more time with my kids than any of my friends.
|
| Every individual is different with their situation and
| motivations. What worked for me might not work for
| others. The thing which helped me the most was my innate
| desire to build better products and making sure I keep
| learning more and more.
|
| My life's driving principle is: If I can't look back at
| my self 2 years back and I don't think I was so stupid
| back then I am not learning fast enough.
|
| Even though I have regrets, I would say it was worth it.
| Of course if I could I wish few things would have gone
| differently about my life - but who doesn't.
| reasonabl_human wrote:
| Thanks for all of your insights here, really great stuff.
| The 2y growth mindset is especially refreshing to hear.
|
| Also if you are looking to expand into new ideas and want
| eng folks with more time on their hands I have a group
| that would be interested. Currently we are evaluating
| ideas to go off and build after coming to terms with the
| big tech corporate grind.
| baxtr wrote:
| Oh man. Wow. Incredible. I am really really glad it
| worked out well for you. I am in the same position like
| you were. I never want to go back to corporate hell, so
| my ideas have to work :D
|
| What was your biggest lesson? Is there one thing you
| would do differently now if you could?
| bootstrapper101 wrote:
| If you love what you are doing, it will give you the
| drive to keep doing it.
|
| Listen to Naval's podcast about "How to get rich". He
| knows how to put ideas much better than me.
|
| There are no shortcuts and if I tell you my winning
| lottery number after claiming the prize, it's not worth
| anything. Discover how you can provide value in your own
| unique way.
| moneywoes wrote:
| I agree with your premise that everyone has to provide
| value in their own unique way. However, what skills
| primed you for success? You mentioned knowing the
| equation between CLV and CAC. Any similar knowledge? What
| about on the software side? I imagine marketing (PPC,SEO)
| is more important than tech stack.
| bootstrapper101 wrote:
| As I mentioned in other posts, I focussed on learning and
| pace.
|
| I first went moderately deep on technology skills. Then
| on a need basis, I kind of did a BFS on all skills needs
| to build and run a startup.
|
| Eventually all the skills are important.
|
| One other thing I really put a lot of effort in is trying
| to put me in the shoes of other parties. E.g. if I am
| trying to launch an idea I try to get in the shoes of
| engineer, pm, design, marketing, analytics and end user.
| Given that I have played all of these roles to some
| extent, it helps me make better decisions.
| xwdv wrote:
| If you're getting older and don't have kids yet, would
| you recommend then not having kids at all or still having
| them anyway?
|
| Maybe it would be better to seek a young wife then if you
| plan to be ambitious?
| bootstrapper101 wrote:
| All the questions you are asking are coming from your
| head and not your heart!
|
| With wife and kids you want to follow your heart as long
| as your head (life situation) can support it.
|
| If you would want to love your kids and be there for
| them, have them whenever you can. Nothing is guaranteed
| for anyone. Make your best case effort and love them from
| the bottom of your heart.
|
| Don't seek out wife like an agenda. That is a receipt for
| disaster. I married my wife because that was the first
| person I met where my thought process was: "How can I
| make her happy" not "How does this person fulfill my
| image and needs from a life partner".
|
| Your expectations from your life partner might change
| with time. If you start with a baseline and it doesn't
| hold anymore, it would likely lead to discontent and
| possibly separation. Expectation is the bane of all
| relationship.
|
| For immediate family just focus on what you can give and
| don't expect anything back.
| randomsearch wrote:
| > We delayed having kids because of this and that is my
| biggest regret.
|
| Don't answer if this is too personal - but why the
| regret? It sounds like you have had kids, so perhaps it
| got harder? Or you had fewer than you wanted. Why do you
| regret it?
| bootstrapper101 wrote:
| Every year you delay having kids, you are reducing the
| amount of time you will spend with your kids and
| grandkids.
|
| As you get older, the quality of time you spend with them
| will also get worse.
|
| My wife went through lot of difficulties in her
| pregnancies. It would have been easier for her body, if
| we had kids earlier.
|
| My drive to get out of the corporate slavery was the
| reason for the delay. So I regret the delay.
| herodoturtle wrote:
| Hey man, if it's any consolation, my folks had me when
| they were very young, and I barely spent any time with
| them whilst growing up. As immigrants we had it pretty
| tough financially, and they were always working long
| hours (always for someone else) to try make ends meet.
| They harbour significant regret about not being more
| present in my childhood.
|
| These days they're of course much older, and I am in the
| lucky position to be able to look after them financially,
| but they're also filled with added regret about depending
| on me - they feel like failures because rely on me to
| cover all their expenses - despite my best efforts to
| assure them that it's ok.
|
| So to your point, whilst having kids younger means you
| can spend more time with them when you're older, it's not
| necessarily the better solution if it requires a trade-
| off in terms of first establishing yourself financially -
| and from reading your other comments - it sounds like you
| and I both started off in life with relatively little, so
| I think the choice to first secure ourselves financially
| before having kids makes more sense.
|
| I delayed having kids with my wife until relatively late
| (I was 37 she was 33), and whilst I know this will
| probably reduce the amount of time I'll get to spend with
| my children when I'm much older, the peace of mind that
| has come with having first established my SaaS before
| starting a family is immense.
|
| In fact one could argue that the reduced stress alone
| will probably add 10 years on to my life :-)
|
| Thanks for sharing your inspirational comments above and
| below. Enjoyed reading all of them. And congratulations
| on the success - I'm sure it is well deserved.
| bootstrapper101 wrote:
| I know. We had kids around the same age.
|
| In my case my big mistake was moving to US mid way in
| career. It disrupted by established life and I had to
| start over from scratch. If I had stayed in my native
| country, I would have been able to have kids earlier.
|
| Thanks for sharing your experience!
| jcims wrote:
| I'm looking at folks that are having kids when they are
| older than i was and they seem to have their shit
| together so much more. In looking back I feel like I
| squandered some of the time I had with my children by not
| really understanding how fast the years go by and
| focusing too much on being a provider vs. being present.
| My youngest is ready to leave the home and I still have
| these flickering day dreams of these things I'm going to
| do with my kids and I still see them as kids.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| This is exactly right - I've had my kids in my mid 30s,
| and while there are upsides, there are downsides.
|
| At a friend's wedding, his great grandmother was there.
| Hearing that, I realised there is an amazing upside to
| having kids a little earlier.
| xwdv wrote:
| Don't get too hung up on it. While it's cool to be a
| great grandparent, a great grandparent has tons of grand
| kids, and a lot of them don't really give that much of a
| shit about you at the end of the day unless you're some
| kind of interesting person. No descendants will care
| about you as much as your immediate children. I love my
| grandparents, but barely see them or talk to them even
| knowing the time is short.
|
| Think of the advantage of having kids later: Your kids
| get to be born into a deeper and better future, and may
| some day enter the 22nd century, lucid and able.
| bootstrapper101 wrote:
| This is a really good point. You can have at it all but
| you can definitely wish ;)
| brandonmenc wrote:
| My great grandmothers were alive until I was in my 20s,
| but they were like, practically in arranged marriages
| when they were 14.
|
| I know this is an extreme example but, talk about
| downsides!
| blacktriangle wrote:
| Is it? Every study on arranged marriages I've seen points
| to lower divorce rates and higher general happiness.
| Assuming your parents aren't assholes they'll try and do
| right by their kids. And the nice thing about an arranged
| marriage is that it's two people not following some
| illusions of effortless love and happiness, but two
| people coming together to collaboratively build that love
| and happiness.
| brandonmenc wrote:
| Uh, yeah.
|
| One of my great grandmothers was in an actual arranged
| marriage at age 14 to a man who was like 60 years old.
| She managed to get out of that one, but had to marry
| another man (my great grandfather, who I never met) to do
| it.
|
| It was a different world back then, but compressing
| generations to the point where you are able to know your
| great grandparents usually requires some creative
| accounting that wouldn't fly for most people today.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| It was a different world, but it sounds as though the
| first marriage was irrelevant to the timeline of you
| knowing her.
| raverbashing wrote:
| Well, what's life but not a sequence of "pick your own
| adventure" choices.
|
| But live for yourself and what you think is good. It's
| always a tradeoff. Having your grandparents at your
| wedding is nice, sure, but you can't optimize for
| everything.
| artemonster wrote:
| How old are you now, if I may? Were you having your kids
| in late 40ies?
| [deleted]
| alexyz12 wrote:
| How did you have time to raise kids while working at your
| startup? It seems thats what corporate jobs are great for
| because you spend less time at work.
| bootstrapper101 wrote:
| I had kids after my startup was successful!
| andi999 wrote:
| This is fascinating. Is your product b2b? How fast did you
| discard the 25 ideas? It sounde like you needed 3 month at
| least, so 8 years? What did you live on during that time? So
| in short:please tell me more
| bootstrapper101 wrote:
| It's a consumer product. It is very draining. In today's
| world consumer don't want to pay for anything, unless they
| really want the product and they don't have a way to get it
| otherwise.
|
| Many users would use the product and then file chargebacks.
| Many users will go to any extend to get out of paying
| coming up with either sad stories, lies or threats. When
| it's a low cost, high volume product (5m+ paying customers
| over time) - you deal with too many of these and sometimes
| it's very demoralizing.
|
| I used to work for someone else in Saas and this wasn't
| such a big issue there. Next thing I do won't be in
| consumer.
|
| Some ideas where tried end to end in a week, some were run
| for 2 years. Did a lot of mistakes along the way.
| neolog wrote:
| > Did a lot of mistakes along the way.
|
| What distinguished the successful attempts from the
| unsuccessful ones?
|
| How did you know when it was time to move on?
| philipyoungg wrote:
| May I know what your product is? I'm working on
| www.stayinsession.com for almost a year now. It's B2C and
| extremely rough.
|
| And as you said: loathe customer support for B2C.
| bootstrapper101 wrote:
| Biggest issue with customer support are: Getting
| customers and supporting them.
|
| Solution to both of them is making a simple product which
| provides incredible value which is self serve. Word of
| mouth will take care of the rest. Eventually build a
| community driven forum which will help with support.
| tfang17 wrote:
| We've had a good experience at Eureka Surveys (also
| bootstrapped) hiring an offshore support team to support
| our 1M+ users.
| ZephyrBlu wrote:
| > In today's world consumer don't want to pay for
| anything, unless they really want the product and they
| don't have a way to get it otherwise
|
| Knowing this, how do you create and market your product
| to get people to buy?
|
| I feel like with B2B it's easier to convince people to
| buy purely by showing them value, whereas B2C seems more
| impulse driven.
| bootstrapper101 wrote:
| Think about how many non-basic need products that you
| know which consumers pay which is not some kind of
| exclusive or monopoly: Utilities, Cable, Cell phone,
| NetflixEtc, Uber*.
|
| Today's consumer doesn't like to pay for anything,
| especially if it is a digital product. They will do
| whatever they can to get out of paying either by pirating
| or trying to get a refund/chargeback after using it.
|
| Sometimes they will do an impulse buy. Which is what we
| were able to work for us, but then bad actors try to make
| your life as miserable as possible.
|
| B2B is not rosy and has its own set of issues. But I
| would rather kick 50 ungrateful users from the platform
| to their face, rather than deal with 10k ungrateful
| consumers.
| throwaway11002 wrote:
| How do I identify the ungrateful ones early enough? :D
| BackBlast wrote:
| Anyone trying to beat you up on price or haggle tends to
| fit in this bucket. If they love the service the price
| won't be much of an obstacle.
| nj999999 wrote:
| What kind of consumer product? Just curious. Is the habit
| here to be vague for reasons of IP protection or
| something?
| texasbigdata wrote:
| Why do you feel he has to disclose when he openly shared
| child birth struggles while you use a throw away?
| Communitivity wrote:
| From friends I've talked with, the benefits of the valley are
| real, but diminishing. At the same time downsides are increasing:
| cost of living, homelessness, real estate prices (though I read
| these are coming down a bit). I've been told the benefit has been
| the ease of networking, and likely will always be so. As startup
| hubs grow around the country this networking benefit will start
| to be there. It is already there in some places such as Austin
| and Boston.
|
| There are a number of hubs in the country now, with most outside
| the valley focusing on one or more niches. Some of these are:
|
| - Nanotechnology in Boston and Middlesex-essex, MA
|
| - Healthcare Boston, New York City, and the Twin Cities of
| Minnesota. Big investments though are being made in Kansas, Ohio,
| Texas, and Pennsylvania
|
| - SaaS in Austin,TX
|
| - Education in Boston
|
| - Fintech in New York City
| vram22 wrote:
| Any regions focusing on e-learning (other than Boston
| (education, which has some overlap)?
| thegginthesky wrote:
| Also, Chicago is a major hub for Logistics Tech. I work for a
| startup that recently moved their head-quarters from NYC to
| Chicago, due to the talent there.
| fnord77 wrote:
| These hubs all have anchors.
|
| valley hardware/software anchors - Berkeley and Stanford
|
| boston tech anchors - MIT, Harvard
|
| NYC fintech anchor - Wall St.
|
| etc.
| gautamdivgi wrote:
| >>> real estate prices (though I read these are coming down a
| bit)
|
| That's not really the case. It's people moving out of SF. The
| Bay Area (and surrounding suburbs) real estate market is hotter
| than ever. Just had a friend move there and finding a place to
| buy is basically you willing to bid over asking price.
| sharkweek wrote:
| This is happening in Seattle. You can maybe buy a small condo
| downtown or on Capitol Hill for a deal right now. But as
| Seattle is a city of neighborhoods, if you want a house,
| you're paying 200k over asking price against 10-20 offers
| right now.
| nonameiguess wrote:
| Northern Virginia for any sort of federal work, though it's not
| the same situation since the clearance requirements disqualify
| most non-citizens, people of foreign birth, or just most people
| at all since most people don't have security clearances. Still
| fertile ground for people who meet the requirements, though.
| Communitivity wrote:
| Agreed. I think defense startups are different animals
| though, based on my experience as a contractor in startup
| size defense contracting firms in the past. I could see
| different networking circles, different hiring requirements
| (you mentioned clearances), different software setups (I've
| worked on teams where using git over ssh not allowed on
| government networks). I plan the curate the results from this
| ask into https://github.com/BillBarnhill/AwesomeStartupHubs,
| and will include defense hubs there too.
| jeremyis wrote:
| Don't forget burgeoning Miami!
| catillac wrote:
| Is "SaaS" traditionally considered a niche like the others? The
| concept seems very broad as opposed to others like Fintech or
| Healthcare. I would consider a category like "APIs" to be
| overbroad, and SaaS seems to be similar. I'm very open to being
| wrong though.
| brianwawok wrote:
| SaaS is all over. I can think of 100 SaaS companies by me in
| Indiana, and I didn't look that hard. I think it's not an
| Astin niche...
| vram22 wrote:
| >SaaS is all over.
|
| Yes. By its very nature.
|
| Plus, SaaS is more like a horizontal niche (though I would
| really call it a layer, with, e.g. shrink-wrapped software
| being another horizontal layer), while fintech, healthcare
| etc. are vertical layers[1]. In fact, the industry jargon
| term (outside of the narrow world of tech, at least), is
| "verticals". Ask any marketing guy. Verticals are usually
| defined by the business domain they apply to.
|
| [1] E.g.: you can have a fintech SaaS and a healthcare
| shrinkwrapped app, and vice versa, and so on.
| Communitivity wrote:
| I thought this was something I'd like to hear the wisdom of the
| HN crowd on, so I submitted "Ask HN: What do you see as the
| current non-valley startup hubs?"
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26502282
| steveklabnik wrote:
| People have been saying this for a very long time. I did a
| startup in Pittsburgh back in ~2009, and this was exactly what
| everyone was saying. My cofounder is still doing startups in
| the same space(ish), but in the Bay Area now.
|
| That doesn't mean it won't ever come to pass, but I am still
| skeptical. (And I live in Austin now... but the startup I work
| for is still fundamentally based in the Bay.)
| omarhaneef wrote:
| This is a strong argument: people have been talking about the
| distribution of work with every new invention (phone call,
| fax, email, and now video conferencing). And they don't just
| mean moving from San Fran to Austin (where people speak the
| same language, and you can hire citizens, and the currency is
| the same and you drive on the same side of the street), but
| to India and China.
|
| And yet, and yet, and yet the same centers of industry
| persist. Movies in LA, Oil in Houston, Finance in NYC and
| tech in San Fran.
|
| I am sure the arguments for the persistence are well
| rehearsed and can be looked up but I just want to underscore
| one feature: winner take all.
|
| Whichever argument you find compelling as to why these
| industries congregate, (networking is easier, money is easier
| to get, you have everything you need in one place, ambitious
| people go there and so on) it has to be such that the #1
| place has an enormous advantage over the #2 place. If your
| argument does not have that structure, it doesn't really
| explain why everyone congregates.
|
| And if your argument does have that property (some winner-
| take-all mechanism), then after covid and zoom force a
| redistribution, so long as that small advantage maintains,
| the dominant city will re-assert itself.
| ipaddr wrote:
| Things have been changing. Hollywood makes fewer movies
| than ever before and most of the work has moved elsewhere.
| Tv shows for networks are still made there but with so many
| additional channels more shows are being made elsewhere.
|
| Pittsburgh,Detriot were never in a position to overtake the
| valley. California offers too much and the valley is not
| moving to another citt. But less companies feel the need to
| be in the valley because the internet provides a virtual
| space.
|
| Oil is being replaced with renewable power so that shift
| won't affect who the oil capital is but it will reduce it's
| imporance.
|
| Finance and New York fit culturally well together like
| California dreams and high tech startups.
| nradov wrote:
| The other benefit of locating in Silicon Valley is convenient
| access to multiple first and second tier universities. Many
| startups are founded to commercialize research done in those
| schools. Only a few other areas have a similar concentration of
| top schools.
| misthop wrote:
| It's amusing to read this comment in response to one that
| calls out Boston 3 times.
| bryzaguy wrote:
| Harvard is pretty close to Boston, is the best I could
| think of.
| misthop wrote:
| Harvard, MIT, BU, BC, Tufts, Brandeis, Northeastern.
| Brown is an hour and a half away
| importantbrian wrote:
| Harvard isn't just pretty close to Boston. It's right
| across the river. If you stand on the campus of Boston
| University you can look across the Charles river and see
| the campus of both Harvard and MIT. That's 3 top 50
| schools within sight of each other. BC, Northeastern, and
| Tufts are just a few miles away from BU. That's 6 top
| tier universities all within a few miles of each other.
| jampa wrote:
| Nice writeup!
|
| Speaking as someone that tried to be a founder from Brazil: I
| imagine that making it on Silicon Valley must be hard task on
| itself but making in an underdeveloped country makes odds stacked
| against you.
|
| We compete with companies founded with people that have access to
| clients with way more purchasing power and better supply
| pipeline.
|
| I'm a bit curious on how the team got overcame this issues, and
| would suggest you to repost this on a time that gets more traffic
| in americas, since is 3AM here.
| TheMagicHorsey wrote:
| Read about the success of Zoho. An Indian company with no
| funding that has bootstrapped to billions in revenue. And they
| are doing development in small towns in India. Talk about
| overcoming the obstacles of an underdeveloped country!
| mh_ wrote:
| We were a little bit lucky in this regard, because we had some
| authority in the niche (2 members of our original team had
| spoken at security conferences internationally for the previous
| 10 years).
|
| I have lots of thoughts on this though. I think with a low
| enough burn rate, you can overcome this with a great product,
| and taking just one bite at a time. ie. one happy customer,
| then another. Actual customer happiness is so low, that you
| just have to do a little better to have people talk about you,
| and over time it compounds nicely.
| mh_ wrote:
| I've previously pondered how we would have approached our
| early steps if we were completely unknown, and the best
| option i can think of is a kind of sincere, influencer
| marketing approach.
|
| i.e. if you dont have the voice in the industry that people
| will listen to, find people who do, and get them to see your
| product. Most industry leaders are constantly looking to up
| their game, so you should be able to catch their eye, and if
| your product is awesome, they will say so
| 1cvmask wrote:
| How would you recommend approaching them?
| mh_ wrote:
| I think it would depend on how those experts roll.
|
| For infosec for example, i think if your product did "X
| amazing thing", then you'd definitely get a seasoned
| experts attention if you tweeted "hey, we built a thing
| that does X amazing thing, give me 5 minutes and i'll
| show it to you"
|
| I think theres a part of this that means your products
| has to convince them in the 5 minutes they give you (or
| at least has to convince them to give you 5 minutes more)
| 0xfaded wrote:
| > We compete with companies founded with people that have
| access to clients with way more purchasing power and better
| supply pipeline.
|
| Your wording flipped a bit in my head. That exact wording could
| be said of Europe. There's a whole show and dance to make it
| seem like it's not, but when everything is about government
| grants and consortiums, it is.
| nmfisher wrote:
| > Your wording flipped a bit in my head. That exact wording
| could be said of Europe. There's a whole show and dance to
| make it seem like it's not, but when everything is about
| government grants and consortiums, it is.
|
| Sounds very much like Australia, too.
| 0xfaded wrote:
| Hey, I'm originally from Australia. My take is that
| Australia is ever so slightly better off since you don't
| have all the EU state support regulations to comply with.
| It's unbelievable how good the EU is at wasting people's
| time. You're also slightly higher on the VC dollars per
| capita.
| skrebbel wrote:
| Just curious, where in Europe is doing a SaaS business "about
| government grants and consortiums"?
| 0xfaded wrote:
| Even if you have a profitable SaaS business, it's common to
| use public funding to cover R&D, i.e. most of your software
| engineer salaries.
|
| Usually this will involve identifying features, getting
| documentation from your customers they would use the
| features, inventing a story about how these features will
| save CO2 and create export oriented jobs, and magically
| forgetting that you have all the inhouse competencies
| needed while simultaneously identifying a knowledge partner
| (preferably in another EU country) who can provide you with
| the missing knowledge.
|
| It's hard to believe it unless you've seen it. Many
| companies have full-time employees who do nothing but write
| and manage funding applications. And don't think it stops
| at startups. Consortiums mixing startups and established
| SMEs are a huge plus.
| xondono wrote:
| Depends on the SaaS business.
|
| We are building waste management IoT devices that are
| deployed to the public, and making a sale easily takes 2
| years and thousands of hours in compliance testing and
| validation.
| zaczekadam wrote:
| This is a pretty exciting blog post. I'm totally stealing the
| customer swag idea, it's great.
|
| Fingers crossed on 100M ARR!
| igammarays wrote:
| The best part? Every penny of that $11M ARR is yours to spend
| however you wish. Nobody's going to question you if you take your
| company's money and spend it on a private helicopter or a summer
| beach home in Cyprus (all easily affordable for $11M). If you had
| accepted even a tiny pre-seed investment, you wouldn't have that
| freedom - the company's money is not yours, and although you
| could live comfortably on executive salary, bonuses, and stock
| sales, you can't avoid scrutiny until you've sold the company or
| IPO'ed.
|
| The second best part about bootstrapping (specifically: solo
| bootstrapping)? The immense satisfaction of eating from the work
| of my own hands. I finally launched my side project last month,
| and it's making enough to pay for rent and food. I have no other
| source of income or savings, and the feeling is fantastic -- even
| though the amount I am earning right now is tiny, far less than
| what I earned as a private consultant or employee of a VC-backed
| firm before. I wouldn't trade this feeling of satisfaction for
| any other job in the world. The freedom of 100% ownership:
| earning, managing, and spending every dollar without having to
| answer to anyone is priceless.
|
| Taking VC money is just a glorified type of employment with
| lottery returns.
| wpietri wrote:
| The first one is only true for a solo founder. Given that they
| said "we", the company's money is still the company's money.
|
| Also, it's not clear to me that avoiding accountability is
| really a plus for a startup. Basically the first thing I did
| when I was exploring a solo founder/bootstrapped thing was to
| hire a startup-focused coach to serve as an accountability
| partner.
| radihuq wrote:
| A startup-focused coach sounds incredibly valuable. How did
| you find your coach?
| wpietri wrote:
| This was somebody I know through the Lean Startup movement,
| Sean Murphy: https://www.skmurphy.com/
|
| He's brilliant, and he started Bootstrappers Breakfast, so
| he's very comfortable with bootstrapping and solo founders.
| He asked so many good questions.
|
| I also recommend Tristan Kromer:
| http://www.tristankromer.com/
|
| He's also great, and is more focused on larger startups and
| intrapreneurs.
| mritchie712 wrote:
| Shameless related plug: I run https://www.trypaper.io/ which
| helps SaaS companies find non-dilutive and non-VC funding.
| Bootstrap doesn't need to mean "no outside capital". There are
| capital sources out there that align with what most
| bootstrappers value (e.g. retaining control of their company,
| calm growth, etc.).
| teachrdan wrote:
| In the US context, of the company is an LLC then you can't just
| spend its money like it's yours without "piercing the veil" and
| jeopardizing your LLC status.
|
| But point taken! You don't have to answer to VC whose interests
| don't necessarily align with yours.
| stickfigure wrote:
| > if the company is an LLC then you can't just spend its
| money like it's yours
|
| You can't spend out of the company's bank account, but you
| can take distributions from the company. At that point it's
| yours.
| stevoski wrote:
| Many of the customers of my B2B SaaS are the type of company from
| the article.
|
| We're small enough that I check out the website of every new
| company. I continue to be amazed at the sheer breadth of small-
| ish, profitable companies, often bootstrapped, that I would
| normally never encounter.
|
| Also, a shameless plug for my podcast for people running
| bootstrapped software companies: https://bootstrapped.fm/
| mritchie712 wrote:
| Shameless related plug, I run https://www.trypaper.io/ which
| helps SaaS companies find non-dilutive funding. I don't think
| Bootstrap needs to mean "no outside capital". There are capital
| sources out there that align with what most bootstrappers value
| (e.g. retaining control of their company, calm growth, etc.).
| cosmodisk wrote:
| One thing I don't understand is this notion that any startup can
| happen only in the valley,or if someone starts there, it's 100
| times easier. The main benefit,which the US startups take for
| granted is the market size. You don't need to learn German,
| French ,or Spanish just to sell to your neighbors.
| hinkley wrote:
| When I was coming up there was a huge brain drain going on from
| the midwest. A lot of those people ended up in Seattle, because
| of Seattle, NYC and SF, Seattle seems the smallest culture
| change (that is of course debatable, especially with the
| Seattle Freeze). Since then Chicago has become eminent in
| fintech, so I expect some people end up there, but that's not
| everybody's speed either.
|
| Saint Louis is also pretty centrally located from an Internet
| infrastructure standpoint and as far as I'm aware they've not
| amounted to much of anything from an IT standpoint since
| ftp.wustl.edu. It looks like Boeing, Square, and a bunch of
| banks have offices there.
|
| That may have to do with secondary issues like the quality of
| education in Missouri. Undergrads might not give a damn but
| founders and VCs might care quite a bit.
| ithinkso wrote:
| Well, of the two neighbors, one speaks Spanish and the other
| speaks French a bit
| jerrre wrote:
| I think the point is that the US is so big that you don't to
| reach the neighbors
| [deleted]
| tfang17 wrote:
| Seems to be a lot of questions about how bootstrapped startups
| handle customer support.
|
| I'm the cofounder of Eureka Surveys. We're bootstrapped,
| profitable, and just crossed 1M+ users. We've had an amazing
| experience hiring customer support in the Philippines. I have a
| thread about it on Twitter:
| https://twitter.com/t0mstah/status/1356296043009253382
|
| The tl;dr is that you can hire cheap ($3.50/hr), high quality
| virtual assistants from the Philippines to handle customer
| support for you, all from day one. Having CS has really made a
| difference for us in our business and is one of our main
| differentiators as we've scaled up the CS team. DM me on Twitter
| and I can connect you to some excellent VAs looking for jobs!
| jiux wrote:
| I've been to the Philippines a couple times (out of my own
| curiosity; origin = USA), and let me tell you, customer service
| there is HUGE.
|
| From an American perspective, a couple key points to know are
| 1. Filipinos are among the nicest people in the world,
| cultural-wise, and 2. English is taught starting in most
| elementary schools there.
|
| But wait, there's more!
|
| From the Filipino perspective, you get to help enable a new
| means of living income in what is a competitive and resourced-
| limited economy. To add perspective, while it's not in all
| locations, it's not uncommon to see homeless children wandering
| hopelessly.
| tfang17 wrote:
| 100% agree, it's a win-win for everyone!
|
| Filipino culture is also very friendly and most VAs speak
| almost fluent English.
| goatherders wrote:
| Saved for later, thank you for sharing.
| iambateman wrote:
| Hey Tommy, I DMed you but figured I would ask here too...what
| service do you use for VA?
| cambalache wrote:
| - Cheap, high-quality, free-from-exploitation. Pick 2.
|
| Spare me the "Life is cheaper in the 3-world non-sense"
| tfang17 wrote:
| We do try and pay above market rate and provide benefits to
| our VAs. In general, our philosophy is to treat them like
| long-term employees, rather than as short-term contractors.
|
| We have had 0% attrition rate and have been told by our VAs
| that working for us has been the best job they've ever had!
| yibg wrote:
| What do you propose? Don't hire from cheap places or pay them
| the same rate as expensive places? If companies pays the same
| as expensive places, why would they hire from cheaper places?
| cambalache wrote:
| Write all these down:
|
| - Pay your local workers livable wages and dont fuck the
| local population. Where are most of the customers located?
|
| - If you want to hire foreign workers pay them the same or
| a substantial fraction of your local workers. If they are
| good their nationality should not matter.
|
| - Hire and pay directly not through intermediates, dont
| wash your hands off from all the regulations you need to
| comply with.
|
| Here we have a company which is effectively paying 10-20%
| of what a local worker would get (Net
| Salaries+Taxes+Compliance Requirements,etc). Are they going
| to charge for their product 10% of the US price in the
| Philippines?
|
| Many companies want the "good things" about globalization:
| Access to cheap, unregulated workforce, free-flow of
| capitals, lack of responsibility for any externality
| created (are they contributing to social security?) but
| complain about the other side: worldwide liability, open
| borders, different regulations.
| yibg wrote:
| How much is a substantial fraction and who determines
| that? Is it a simple fraction or does it depend on the
| market and competitive landscape? Is it something
| governments should regulate or should consumers vote with
| their wallets?
|
| Companies should adhere to regulations though, no
| arguments there.
| cambalache wrote:
| > How much is a substantial fraction and who determines
| that
|
| I determine that and I say +80% , you dont get weasel out
| of this with useless semantic distinctions.
|
| > Is it a simple fraction
|
| As oppose to a "complex" one?
|
| > Is it something governments should regulate or should
| consumers vote with their wallets?
|
| The company owners should be ethical enough to pay that.
|
| Do you use this kind of sophistry to justify your
| compensation or what you charge for your product or
| service? I highly suspect that is not the case. Easy
| peasy to play Aristotle when it is about poor working-
| people living money.
| mplewis wrote:
| Because paying people enough money to thrive, not just
| survive, is the right thing to do.
| yibg wrote:
| That certainly would be great, but is it realistic?
|
| Manufacturing for example, is heavily outsourced to
| cheaper locations. We can certainly have all the tshirts
| we buy in the US made in the US. Hire locally, create
| jobs, pay a thriving wage etc.
|
| Then the tshirts will cost more. You might be ok with
| that, but will the rest of the population? Or will they
| opt to buy the $10 tshirts made in China? Do we impose
| heavy duties on anything imported, so the domestic
| products are price competitive? What about export
| markets? Will Europe buy our $50 tshirts over the $10
| Chinese made tshirts?
|
| Paying local workers a thriving wage would be great, and
| we certainly do it for many sectors (tech for example). I
| just don't know if it's workable for a lot of things.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| If they want to make more, why not simply charge more and let
| the market decide what's the fair value?
| tfang17 wrote:
| Can connect y'all directly with our source in the Philippines
| if you DM me on Twitter!
|
| Better to go straight to the source in my opinion, rather than
| using something like Fiverr. Going direct is cheaper, allows
| you to interview around a bit more easily, and helps build a
| more direct, long-term connection with the VA as an employer
| instead of as a contractor.
| ismail wrote:
| Congrats mh_ and team.
| donnythecroc wrote:
| This is awesome
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