Welcome to The Bootstrapped Founder, home of the Bootstrapper’s Bookshelf. You’ll find the most recent blog posts below.

  • Too Many Eyes: Why Bootstrapped Companies Stop Being Transparent (Eventually)

    December 10, 2019 by

    Reading Time: 5 minutes When Buffer started being radically transparent, the entrepreneurial community was enthusiastic. A brighter future of collaboration, shared learning, openness, and lifting the disadvantaged was on the horizon. Revenue, Salaries, Compensation: everything was made public for everyone to see. Recently, Buffer closed off its public revenue dashboard. Other bootstrapped companies such as Transistor.fm have gone through… Read more

  • The Bootstrapper’s Plight: The Social Headaches of Building a Business

    December 5, 2019 by

    Reading Time: 6 minutes Many founders choose to create a lifestyle business. They have read the 4-Hour-Workweek by Tim Ferriss and now want to build a company that can sustain a life of travel, enjoying the world, and spending time with their loved ones. Gone will be the days of overtime, the excruciating commutes, the pointless teambuilding weekends. Well,… Read more

  • Finding a Market to Build a SaaS

    November 28, 2019 by

    Reading Time: 9 minutes So you want to build a SaaS. You think it can solve a problem that other people are having. They might even pay you money for it. Now all you need is an audience. A market for your product. An audience to sell to — a bunch of people that like your product enough to… Read more

  • Real and Imaginary Responsibilities of a Bootstrapped Founder

    November 22, 2019 by

    Reading Time: 8 minutes As a founder, you will encounter many expectations. Founders have to have a mission. They have to care about their customers genuinely. A great founder is a leader, a visionary, an expert. Sometimes you just want to be you — the entrepreneur who had a good idea for a business and then worked on it… Read more

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