Hi! I’m Arvid.
Welcome to The Bootstrapped Founder, a resource for everyone who wants to bootstrap their own business.
The Bootstrapped Founder is the home of my book 📗Zero to Sold: How to Start, Run, and Sell a Bootstrapped Business and 📘The Embedded Entrepreneur, which is an audience-driven book teaching you how to build an audience-driven business.
I’m building a Software-as-a-Service tool for authors who care about the quality of the links in their work. It’s called PermanentLink and I am sharing my progress on Twitter and on my podcast.
You will also find the Bootstrapper’s Bookshelf, the Bootstrapped Founder Podcast, and the Bootstrapped Founder Newsletter.
Learn how to start, run, and sell a bootstrapped business from the Bootstrapped Founder Newsletter.
Here are my most recent blog posts:
Selfish vs. Selfless: Self-Promotion in Communities
Reading Time: 4 minutes I used to think all self-promotion was wrong — at all times. Being raised in Germany, I developed a severe case of tall poppy syndrome — the phenomenon of people holding back so they wouldn’t stand out from the rest. It’s an eclectic mix of jealousy and self-limitation, and I have realized just how destructive … Continue reading Selfish vs. Selfless: Self-Promotion in Communities
Properties of an Interesting Problem
Reading Time: 5 minutes Let’s look at what makes a problem interesting enough to note it down in our search for the perfect business opportunity. Different people will define the word “problem” differently. I think that a “problem” is anything that stands in the way of people accomplishing their goals. If they feel some sort of pain you can … Continue reading Properties of an Interesting Problem
The Line Between Stealing and Being Inspired
Reading Time: 5 minutes This week, a Twitter friend reached out to me and asked this question: “where’s the line between being inspired by the competition and stealing?” That got me thinking. We don’t have a clear code of conduct for this in our community. You often hear phrases like “ideas are worth nothing, execution is everything,” suggesting that … Continue reading The Line Between Stealing and Being Inspired
Audience-Building and Relatable Content
Reading Time: 5 minutes When you’re building an audience, people will resonate with your content differently over time. In the beginning, when you don’t have too many followers, your reputation within the community may not yet be established enough to get away with controversial manifests and content that claims to be the end-all of knowledge on any particular topic. … Continue reading Audience-Building and Relatable Content
Platform Risk and the Three Kinds of Audiences
Reading Time: 3 minutes Imagine waking up one morning only to find your Twitter account suspended. If you’re trying to build an audience on Twitter, this is your worst nightmare. And it’s an entirely possible scenario. It happened to Jack Butcher just a few weeks ago: Twitter suspended all of his brand accounts, including @visualizevalue and @value, the visual … Continue reading Platform Risk and the Three Kinds of Audiences
Impostor Syndrome and Building Capital
Reading Time: 4 minutes There will be days when you feel like you have nothing to say. You might wonder why you should be the one talking about anything when there are people out there who are much more experienced than you. You feel like you’re acting more knowledgeable than you truly are. I have been there. Even now, … Continue reading Impostor Syndrome and Building Capital
Entrepreneurship, Job Security, and Wealth Creation
Reading Time: 6 minutes Being a founder is hard. It’s a well-known trope in the business world that giving up a comfortable job with a reliable salary is a risky move. Whenever I talk about how entrepreneurship is a desirable way of creating wealth, I find someone responding that “some people just prefer security over risk.” It’s all about … Continue reading Entrepreneurship, Job Security, and Wealth Creation
Accountability Systems for Founders
Reading Time: 7 minutes Some days, I don’t feel like doing anything entrepreneurial at all. It’s not that I’m burned out or disinterested, not at all. But there are those days where all I want to do is curl up on the couch and read a good book. Often, I take the day off and indulge in whatever distraction … Continue reading Accountability Systems for Founders
All That Glitters Is Not Gold: Navigating Bootstrapping Advice
Reading Time: 6 minutes A few years ago, I was spending three hours a day sitting on a train, zooming through Germany, commuting from my home to work and back. During those days, I would consume a lot of podcasts, books, and blog posts. I was looking for advice. I wanted to learn everything there was about starting and … Continue reading All That Glitters Is Not Gold: Navigating Bootstrapping Advice
SaaS, Self-Talk, and Many Small Bets
Reading Time: 4 minutes I often find myself trapped in the stories I tell myself. This week, I switched out the payment system of my SaaS PermanentLink. This is a critical part of my business, so I expected the actual coding part to be a high-pressure activity. After all, if I mess up the account management logic, paying customers … Continue reading SaaS, Self-Talk, and Many Small Bets
Audience Graduation
Reading Time: 4 minutes A third-grade math teacher is particularly good at teaching one specific audience: third-grade math students. Every year, a new group of students appears, and they receive a top-notch math education. Private math tutors, however, have to teach students of all ages. They have to educate a very diverse group of people, using many different educational … Continue reading Audience Graduation
Lifetime Deals and SaaS Businesses
Reading Time: 8 minutes If there is one polarizing topic in the bootstrapped SaaS space, it’s running lifetime deals for a subscription business. Founders either love the idea of offering a one-time-payment for “forever access,” or they hate it. It’s right up there with the question, “should you take venture capital funding?” — an equally divisive topic. Michael Aubry … Continue reading Lifetime Deals and SaaS Businesses
The Goals of Audience-Building
Reading Time: 6 minutes Too many people see audience building as a means to an end: they expect to build a following of people that are just sitting there, waiting to be sold something. The goal of this very limited audience-building approach is to find as many potential sales targets as possible, sell to them, and that’s it. I … Continue reading The Goals of Audience-Building
The Shape of a Problem in the Wild
Reading Time: 6 minutes The wonderful thing about humans is that they have a hundred different ways to talk about their dreams, desires, needs, and challenges. No two people will talk about their experiences the same way. Thankfully, we can group these messages into several easy-to-recognize categories while we observe our potential customers in their communities. Here’s an important … Continue reading The Shape of a Problem in the Wild
On Re-Using Content
Reading Time: 5 minutes Creating valuable content is hard. Producing it reliably is even more challenging. Many creators are holding themselves back by believing that they need to create original work at all times. They think that re-using content is a cardinal sin. I believe differently. There is incredible value in re-using your content. There is a misunderstanding of … Continue reading On Re-Using Content
Audience Discovery: The Importance of Budget
Reading Time: 5 minutes When founders are looking for that perfect target audience for their business, they often get many things right. They pick audiences that they know intimately, that have interesting problems to solve, and that they really care about helping. However, I see too many founders struggle with a vital part of the Audience Discovery process: making … Continue reading Audience Discovery: The Importance of Budget
What founders can learn from Twitch streamers about building in public
Reading Time: 7 minutes I’m an avid Twitch viewer. While writing, coding, or just researching, I quite often watch someone playing video games. I could play those games myself, but I wanted to spend time on my projects without dedicating my full attention to a game. Twitch allows me to participate in the gaming experience without losing my focus. … Continue reading What founders can learn from Twitch streamers about building in public
The Emotional Journey of a Bootstrapped Founder: Fear of Disappointing Your Customers
Reading Time: 7 minutes Over the last few weeks, you will have noticed that I have started talking more about the emotional impact of entrepreneurship. I talked about impostor syndrome, people cloning businesses, the loss and grief of selling a business, all topics that most people keep quiet about. I remember keeping quiet about this myself a few years … Continue reading The Emotional Journey of a Bootstrapped Founder: Fear of Disappointing Your Customers
When Your Business Gets Cloned
Reading Time: 4 minutes This week, I ran into a Tweet by Mike Rubini, who had found that not only his product Groouply had been cloned, but the person behind copying his Facebook group monitoring tool had put up a comparison page, trashing Mike’s product. That made Mike wonder if he should stop building in public. It’s an alluring … Continue reading When Your Business Gets Cloned
Jargon and Community
Reading Time: 4 minutes I’ve been thinking a lot about the understood meaning of terms in quickly evolving industries this week. I even chose to make a major pivot because of this in renaming the book I am currently writing. I’ll get to this in a minute. But first, let’s take a little detour into the world of… Opera. … Continue reading Jargon and Community
The Grief and Loss of Selling a Business
Reading Time: 5 minutes This week, my partner, co-founder, and love-of-my-life Danielle Simpson appeared on the Software Social Podcast hosted by Michele Hansen and Colleen Schnettler. In a remarkably open and honest conversation, Danielle touched upon many different topics regarding our journey with FeedbackPanda, but one thing stood out to me: her story of how she dealt with the … Continue reading The Grief and Loss of Selling a Business
The Two Goals of Audience-Building
Reading Time: 7 minutes Let’s talk about audience-building today. Last week, I talked about how I use Twitter, and that was received reasonably well. That’s why I want to talk about why audience-building is such a good idea. I’m aware that many of you already know that I’m working on a book called Audience First. That means I’m currently … Continue reading The Two Goals of Audience-Building
How I Use Twitter
Reading Time: 7 minutes Today, I want to talk about how I leverage Twitter to build an audience, build relationships, and find opportunities. I’ll talk about my overall strategy and the little day-to-day things I do, and which tools I use. I started using Twitter regularly to engage with other founders and talk about my work in October 2019, … Continue reading How I Use Twitter
On Offering Public APIs for Your SaaS
Reading Time: 4 minutes Many bootstrapped SaaS founders see other successful SaaS businesses and think, “Hey, they offer an API, I should do the same” — But should they really? I believe that there are two answers to this question, and they’re determined by which phase of your business you’re in. For companies in the Survival Stage, adding public … Continue reading On Offering Public APIs for Your SaaS
Motivation Will Eventually Go Away: Build Accountability Systems Instead
Reading Time: 3 minutes Motivation is a powerful initial force. It provides momentum. When we start projects, we need that momentum to push us through the initial collision with reality when we learn of all the complex choices we have to make to get things off the ground. It’s the motivation to learn, to discover, and to create that … Continue reading Motivation Will Eventually Go Away: Build Accountability Systems Instead
Audience-Building through Podcasting
Reading Time: 8 minutes Today I want to share my learnings from a year of intense podcasting. I’ve been publishing new episodes of the Bootstrapped Founder podcast for almost a year now, just shy of twelve months. At the same time, I have been a guest on more than twenty podcasts. Both hosting and appearing on podcasts has changed … Continue reading Audience-Building through Podcasting
Avoiding the Validation Trap
Reading Time: 2 minutes When founders talk about validation, we often engage in wishful thinking. We say that we want to validate an idea, an audience, or a problem, but in reality, we hope to find a way to be sure. We hope to discover a guaranteed win—a surefire way to build a successful business. There is no such … Continue reading Avoiding the Validation Trap
Open-Source and Bootstrapping
Reading Time: 4 minutes This week, a few remarkable things happened in the open-source scene. First, Mapbox decided to change the license on their popular Mapbox-gl-js library, used by many to power their fancy in-app maps. They went from the very permissive BSD license to one that contains these fragments: “This license allows developers with a current active Mapbox … Continue reading Open-Source and Bootstrapping
Tech Stacks and Indie Hacking
Reading Time: 6 minutes David Heinemeier Hansson tweeted about Shopify this week. A lot. He was shining a light on their use of the Ruby on Rails framework, which he open-sourced back in 2004. That sixteen-year-old software powers a business that processed over $100m in sales per hour at peak Black Friday. Not only is Shopify running on Ruby … Continue reading Tech Stacks and Indie Hacking
The Rewards and Perils of Being Your Own Customer
Reading Time: 6 minutes There are many risks and advantages to being your own customer. Today, I want to talk about how I am doing this with my current business, PermanentLink, and how Danielle and I did this with our previous company FeedbackPanda. So, what do I mean by being customer #1? I’m talking about using your own product … Continue reading The Rewards and Perils of Being Your Own Customer
When Privacy and Customer Value Clash
Reading Time: 5 minutes This week, I want to talk about a critical decision in the life of my new SaaS project PermanentLink. I’ve been doing some research on competitors and competitive alternatives. I looked into link forwarders, link shorteners, link branding services, pretty much anything that could technically compete with my core product, which boils down to branded … Continue reading When Privacy and Customer Value Clash
How I Approach Pricing for a Brand New SaaS
Reading Time: 7 minutes It’s “pricing week” for my SaaS permanent.link. A few weeks ago, when I made the product public, it had only one price. I had pretty much guessed a random number to start with, and I landed on $25 per month. In the weeks after, I had many conversations with prospective customers. It was clear that … Continue reading How I Approach Pricing for a Brand New SaaS
Sunk Cost Fallacy Engineering
Reading Time: 4 minutes While working on permanent.link this week, I ran into the same issue twice. I had built something that was working great, only to scrap it for another solution a few days after. The first time this occurred, I had just finished my infrastructure for allowing custom domains to be used for permanent links. The other … Continue reading Sunk Cost Fallacy Engineering
Customer Lock-In and “Insurance Features”
Reading Time: 4 minutes Over the last week, I have metaphorically left the building and had several conversations with the audience for my most recent project permanent.link. Since this is a product aimed at authors, I’ve been chatting with writers about their experiences with links in their work. My service can theoretically solve any number of problems, but I … Continue reading Customer Lock-In and “Insurance Features”
Limiting Beliefs
Reading Time: 4 minutes Throughout most of the last two weeks, I have been working on a new software project. It’s called permanentlink, and it’s a SaaS tool for authors. When I published my book Zero to Sold, I ran into one particularly annoying issue: after the book was out, many links that I had put into the book started … Continue reading Limiting Beliefs
Early Tech Choices and Analysis Paralysis
Reading Time: 5 minutes I was working on a side project this week, and I ran into an all-too-familiar pattern: the more I thought about the technical requirements for this project, the bigger it grew in my mind. I only want to build this for myself to see if I could be Customer Zero. But it derailed quickly. What … Continue reading Early Tech Choices and Analysis Paralysis
“Audience-First” Is Not Just “Building an Audience”
Reading Time: 4 minutes We live in overly practical times. More and more entrepreneurs have been conditioned to look for the quick fix, the growth hack that will get them months’ worth of success within a single day. Many founders are looking for immediately actionable tactics, ignoring the long-term strategies in which those should be embedded. That approach has … Continue reading “Audience-First” Is Not Just “Building an Audience”
Finding an Audience for Your Side Business
Reading Time: 16 minutes A step-by-step guide to building your first product, audience-first You can listen to this article as a podcast episode here: In this article, you will learn how to use a data-driven method to find an audience for your side business. I’ve seen this approach work for several founders, allowing them to discover an audience that … Continue reading Finding an Audience for Your Side Business
Priming Your Business for Due Diligence
Reading Time: 6 minutes In preparation for a due diligence process, there are a few things you can routinely update and use. Most of these things have to do with financial and business metrics, while others are legal requirements. The Profit & Loss Sheet One of the first things any interested party will expect you to provide is a … Continue reading Priming Your Business for Due Diligence
Preparing for the Sale From Day One: Getting the Documentation Right
Reading Time: 4 minutes Before any acquisition can happen, many prerequisites need to be in place. There will be an extensive due diligence process. Commonly, “buyer-side due diligence” is the procedure of an acquirer making sure that everything is in order with the business they are about to acquire. It’s a detailed investigation, making sure that everything you claimed … Continue reading Preparing for the Sale From Day One: Getting the Documentation Right
At a Crossroads: The Different Kinds of Exits
Reading Time: 5 minutes Companies get acquired for a few reasons: they’re interesting economically, they’re interesting strategically, their employees are attractive, or they are a thorn in the eye of the acquirer, a foe to be vanquished. Depending on why someone wants to buy your company, the deal and the whole process of selling the company may be radically … Continue reading At a Crossroads: The Different Kinds of Exits
A Unified Voice: Staying Consistent When You Grow
Reading Time: 3 minutes At a certain point, it won’t be just you talking to your customers anymore. Your employees will be the first touch-points for customer interactions, co-founders and directors, and partners and other businesses. What once was a unified voice—your voice—is now a chorus. If you want to have a company that is consistent and aligned, you’ll … Continue reading A Unified Voice: Staying Consistent When You Grow
How I Self-Published Zero to Sold, a Bestselling Book on Bootstrapping
Reading Time: 21 minutes On June 29th, 2020, I self-published a book called Zero to Sold: How to Start, Run, and Sell a Bootstrapped Business and released it on Twitter. Within twenty-four hours, I sold 350 copies. Within another twenty-four hours, the book was #1 on Product Hunt and already a category bestseller on Amazon. After a week, 1000 … Continue reading How I Self-Published Zero to Sold, a Bestselling Book on Bootstrapping
Positioning Is Where It’s At
Reading Time: 5 minutes You can position your product in different ways in many different markets. You may have started describing your product in a certain way, only to find that your customers understand it very differently. Many first-time founders make the mistake of iterating on their product but keeping their positioning the same. Even if they’re capable enough … Continue reading Positioning Is Where It’s At
You Want a Tribe
Reading Time: 4 minutes According to Seth Godin, a tribe is a group of people that are connected to each other, an idea, and a leader. Tribes are supercharged communities. They are dense networks of people who bond over specific interests or goals. These interests range from the mundane to the most personal and exciting topics. No matter if … Continue reading You Want a Tribe
When You Reach Your Limits: Growing a Company Beyond the Founder(s)
Reading Time: 4 minutes If you’re coming from a professional background in salaried positions, the chances are that you’ve never hired anyone before. And even if you have, hiring someone for your own business will be a daunting task. It certainly was for me. I thought that I could manage all that work by myself just fine, so why … Continue reading When You Reach Your Limits: Growing a Company Beyond the Founder(s)
The Power of Omission: Killing Features for Fun and Profit
Reading Time: 7 minutes If you add features to your product indiscriminately, you will end up with a gigantic bloated mess of software. One way to deal with this is to be very careful when deciding if new features should be added. Another rarely used approach is to remove unused and outdated features. Removing the cruft from your SaaS … Continue reading The Power of Omission: Killing Features for Fun and Profit
Made to Stick: Shaping an Extensible Product
Reading Time: 8 minutes It won’t take long before customers start asking for one particular kind of feature: integrating into other tools that they use all the time. They have adopted your product into their routine and their workflow, only to notice that something is missing. Some steps need to be taken to get your product to seamlessly join … Continue reading Made to Stick: Shaping an Extensible Product
Standard Operating Procedures: Managing Your Future Self
Reading Time: 5 minutes Delegation is most effective if there is an Operations Manual for the company. Michael E. Gerber calls this the “Turnkey Revolution” in his book The E-Myth Revisited: the idea of documenting your business like a franchise. Build your business in a way that you could hand it over to someone else, and it would still … Continue reading Standard Operating Procedures: Managing Your Future Self
Roadmaps and You: Building a Future Together
Reading Time: 4 minutes It’s great to know where you are going. It’s even better to know that your customers approve of that. Both goals can be reached by establishing roadmaps. Usually, that’s a document that lays out what you want to do in the future, ordered by when you want to do it, with more or less accurate … Continue reading Roadmaps and You: Building a Future Together
Customer Retention: How to Keep Them Around
Reading Time: 6 minutes When it comes to customer relationships, momentum is on your side: it is much easier to retain a customer than it is to find a new one. Once the initial inertia is surpassed, the effort that needs to be put into keeping a customer is significantly lower than acquiring and onboarding another customer. And a … Continue reading Customer Retention: How to Keep Them Around
Customer Exploration: Seeing Through Your Customer’s Eyes
Reading Time: 4 minutes At this stage of your business, you have a mostly mature product that is used by many customers. You can expect that for most of their use cases, it is good enough. But instead of guessing, I recommend setting aside some time every few months to do some customer exploration. Consider it to be continuous … Continue reading Customer Exploration: Seeing Through Your Customer’s Eyes
Being Small Is a Benefit: How to Leverage Being a Bootstrapper
Reading Time: 6 minutes Many founders feel they need to act bigger than they are. They expect only to be taken seriously when they appear to be a mature company. It turns out that this is no longer the case in many industries. Depending on the size of your customers, the fact that you are a small business with … Continue reading Being Small Is a Benefit: How to Leverage Being a Bootstrapper
Spreading the Word: How to Do Marketing on a Shoestring Budget
Reading Time: 5 minutes One beautiful thing about a niche is that there is a certain similarity between the people in it. They are likely to frequent the same social media, read the same blogs, visit the same websites. They often are organized in communities where word of mouth spreads quickly. You can leverage the density of these networks … Continue reading Spreading the Word: How to Do Marketing on a Shoestring Budget
Seller Beware: Pricing Models That Can Break Your Business
Reading Time: 5 minutes There are a lot of great ideas when it comes to optimizing your pricing to attract more customers or keep them retained. Two pricing models can be hazardous if not implemented carefully: freemium accounts and lifetime accounts. The Risks of Freemium Accounts A freemium pricing model can be great to get people to use your product, integrating … Continue reading Seller Beware: Pricing Models That Can Break Your Business
Not All Subscriptions Are Equal: Offer Yearly Plans from the Start
Reading Time: 3 minutes Most bootstrapped businesses offer monthly subscription plans. The revenue that is generated from your customers that way is incredibly reliable. If you know how many customers you have, you know exactly how much money will come in this month, next month, and the future, provided you keep your customers or replace the ones that quit … Continue reading Not All Subscriptions Are Equal: Offer Yearly Plans from the Start
Not All Subscribers Are Equal: How to Deal with Plans That No Longer Work
Reading Time: 3 minutes You may have started with subscription plans that turn out to be problematic. At FeedbackPanda, we had started with a $5/month plan. After a few months of offering that, we sunset that plan because we noticed that it attracted a kind of customer we did not want to serve: bargain shoppers. The customers on that … Continue reading Not All Subscribers Are Equal: How to Deal with Plans That No Longer Work
Profit-Sharing as Employee Compensation for Bootstrappers
Reading Time: 5 minutes We don’t often talk about employee compensation in the bootstrapped space, as many businesses have few employees, and only start hiring when it’s absolutely necessary. So making sure our employees are properly compensated for their work beyond their regular salary isn’t one of the most prominent themes we have to think about. In a recent … Continue reading Profit-Sharing as Employee Compensation for Bootstrappers
Price Is Not Set In Stone: Strategies For Increasing Your Revenue
Reading Time: 7 minutes It’s important to understand that you can always change your prices. You own your business, and you can change everything about it. Most payment providers allow you to have an infinite number of plans, and you can add (and remove) as many as you like at any given time. There is no reason to stick … Continue reading Price Is Not Set In Stone: Strategies For Increasing Your Revenue
You May Be Barking Up the Wrong Tree: Re-Evaluating Your Audience
Reading Time: 6 minutes While most of your customers will likely enjoy your product, some won’t. Some customers will be complaining a lot, asking for features that you don’t intend to ever build, or are generally very hard to please. When you notice that something is wrong, you can usually trace it back to one or more of your … Continue reading You May Be Barking Up the Wrong Tree: Re-Evaluating Your Audience
Build for Value, Not for Applause: Product Management Under Heavy Constraints
Reading Time: 5 minutes A bootstrapped founder will have very little time to devote to building things that don’t matter. Everything you do in your bootstrapped business should have a meaningful impact on moving your company towards a state of stability and growth. Bells and whistles are the least of your concerns when you’re trying to get to profitability. … Continue reading Build for Value, Not for Applause: Product Management Under Heavy Constraints
First Things First: Feature Prioritization Frameworks
Reading Time: 6 minutes A business is an ever-evolving thing. Luckily, you will be at the steering wheel as the founder of your business. You will adjust your processes as needed along the way, and you improve your product over time. Often, inspiration strikes at the most random times. You read an article on an industry blog, or you … Continue reading First Things First: Feature Prioritization Frameworks
Our MicroConf Europe 2019 Talk “Optimizing Your Way to a Dream Exit”
Reading Time: < 1 minute Danielle and I had the wonderful opportunity to give a Attendee Talk at MicroConf Europe 2019 in Dubrovnik. We spoke about the many optimizations and processes that we implemented during our time growing FeedbackPanda to $55.000 MRR, and how those affected the sale of the business. A recording of this talk is now available in … Continue reading Our MicroConf Europe 2019 Talk “Optimizing Your Way to a Dream Exit”
Forget Goals, Create Systems: Foundations of a Sustainable Bootstrapped Business
Reading Time: 7 minutes When you’re starting with your business idea, you will be looking at how successful businesses have accomplished their success. You will see a lot of different sizes, markets, and business models. But they all have one thing in common: they’ve built a system that works. Their long-term and short-term goals may have changed through the … Continue reading Forget Goals, Create Systems: Foundations of a Sustainable Bootstrapped Business
The Boring Truth of Successful Products That Survive
Reading Time: 6 minutes Most products that you will see staying on the market have something in common: they do one thing very well. And not much else. Weber sells grills that are fantastic at grilling. The furthest they strayed into new territory so far has been by adding an app-readable thermometer. Still, that gimmick and anything else about … Continue reading The Boring Truth of Successful Products That Survive
Making Tech Choices: Don’t Add Risk to an Already Risky Business
Reading Time: 7 minutes As technical founders, we’re supposed to choose the technology that works best for us and our business. But we often let the cargo-culting around the newest, hottest tech stack get to us. Many technical founders see a new startup as an opportunity to figure out a modern tech stack. That is a dangerous move. Not … Continue reading Making Tech Choices: Don’t Add Risk to an Already Risky Business
Not in House: On Reinventing the Wheel
Reading Time: 8 minutes As a bootstrapped founder, you will have to be scrappy. You will want to spend as little as you can on expenses, particularly when you’re just starting. So anything you need to do, you want to do by yourself. Anything you need to use, you will want to build yourself. But in my experience, a … Continue reading Not in House: On Reinventing the Wheel
Surviving a Recession as a Bootstrapped Business
Reading Time: 13 minutes Just a few weeks after the beginning of the Coronavirus outbreak, the first SaaS businesses are reporting cancellations. The bootstrapped SaaS world may not be affected by the pandemic as much as other industries, but we are already seeing second-order effects appearing. For example, you may not be affected by the temporary closure of bars … Continue reading Surviving a Recession as a Bootstrapped Business
How to Release as a Bootstrapper: Often, Early, and Safely
Reading Time: 11 minutes We had “Software is never finished, only abandoned.” While this is true, it doesn’t tell us anything helpful. So let’s rephrase this into something we can act on: “Software is never finished, only released.“ Let’s talk about releasing your product, and what makes this process special for bootstrapped founders. In most cases, technical founders will be … Continue reading How to Release as a Bootstrapper: Often, Early, and Safely
The Do’s and Don’ts of the Minimum Viable Product
Reading Time: 9 minutes Leonardo da Vinci supposedly said, “Art is never finished, only abandoned.” This is definitely true for software as well. The only antidote to abandonment is to put your work in front of other people, even when it’s not perfect yet. The startup industry has coined the term of the MVP, the Minimum Viable Product, to … Continue reading The Do’s and Don’ts of the Minimum Viable Product
The Myth of The Finished Product
Reading Time: 11 minutes Before the internet made transferring large amounts of data cheap and easy, software used to be distributed on CDs or DVDs. For any given application, there was the “Golden Master,” a final version of the software, ready to be copied millions of times. These days are over. Every day, millions of software updates get dispatched. … Continue reading The Myth of The Finished Product
Solution Validation Doesn’t Happen In a Vacuum: How to Talk To Your Future Customers
Reading Time: 7 minutes As entrepreneurs, we are good at coming up with ideas. We envision solutions to the problems that trouble the audience we have chosen to help. We think deeply about a problem, mentally shape a product, and see how much it would benefit the quality of life. Then we get to work and build the prototype, … Continue reading Solution Validation Doesn’t Happen In a Vacuum: How to Talk To Your Future Customers
Make It Sell Itself: On Referral Systems
Reading Time: 12 minutes One year into running FeedbackPanda, we released a referral system. It was an immediate success, and it stayed that way ever since. When we sold the business, around 40% of new signups came through our referral system. Immediately after turning on the user-facing parts of the referral system, we started seeing results. Our social media … Continue reading Make It Sell Itself: On Referral Systems
Problem Validation: Making Sure You’re Talking To The Right People
Reading Time: 8 minutes “Talk to your customers,” they say, “because that’s the only way to build something people want.” The collective wisdom of the bootstrapper scene is not wrong. But talking to your customers is only half the truth. It’s just as important to speak to the right kinds of customers as it is to ignore the rest. … Continue reading Problem Validation: Making Sure You’re Talking To The Right People
Finding the Most Painful Problem in a Market
Reading Time: 10 minutes When you’re looking at a niche market, you will find many people having a large number of problems. However, people will only pay money for a tiny subset of those: the excruciating problems. You can solve many problems but still fail to build a business if you’re solving the wrong ones. Your chances of success … Continue reading Finding the Most Painful Problem in a Market
The Power of the Niche
Reading Time: 9 minutes If you were to found a company that makes and sells beer today, you would probably start a craft brewery. You’d start a small operation, find the people who enjoy your product and slowly expand your business. You would not try to compete with Bud Light and Heinecken for shelf space. You would prefer to … Continue reading The Power of the Niche
Do You Need a Co-Founder?
Reading Time: 8 minutes Building a business alone can be daunting. You might lack a few skills; in fact, I am sure you do. There is a lot to learn when you start a company, and you will never stop running into unexpected challenges that require the acquisition of new skills and knowledge. So, should you find someone to … Continue reading Do You Need a Co-Founder?
So You Got an Offer: How to Do Due Diligence on Your Potential Acquirer
Reading Time: 11 minutes There is almost no better and, at the same time, terrifying feeling than when you receive an email from someone who wants to acquire you. There was great joy when that happened to us at FeedbackPanda. Immediately after, we started to think about the level of risk we were about to expose our company to. … Continue reading So You Got an Offer: How to Do Due Diligence on Your Potential Acquirer
Your Initial Pricing Will Never Be Right, But Try Anyway
Reading Time: 6 minutes When you’re just starting, finding the right pricing model for your young business seems very hard and almost entirely arbitrary. That’s because, at such an early stage of your business, it is impossible to find the “correct” price for several reasons. At the beginning of your business, revenue serves one purpose before any other: validation. … Continue reading Your Initial Pricing Will Never Be Right, But Try Anyway
Churn, Retention, and Revenue: What Makes Customers Stick Around and Why That’s Important
Reading Time: 7 minutes Retaining a customer is easier than finding a new one. You already have an open communication channel. They’re already interested in hearing from you. You also know their behavior patterns, and you can infer how much and how effectively they use your product from your metrics. On average, a 5% increase in customer retention leads … Continue reading Churn, Retention, and Revenue: What Makes Customers Stick Around and Why That’s Important
Continuous Validation: Staying in Touch with Your Market
Reading Time: 7 minutes I first felt that we truly had a validated business when we had our very first yearly subscriber. That level of commitment for a young product such as FeedbackPanda two months into our existence showed us that people wanted what we made and were ready to put their money on it. However, validation is always … Continue reading Continuous Validation: Staying in Touch with Your Market
Too Many Eyes: Why Bootstrapped Companies Stop Being Transparent (Eventually)
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 … Continue reading Too Many Eyes: Why Bootstrapped Companies Stop Being Transparent (Eventually)
The Bootstrapper’s Plight: The Social Headaches of Building a Business
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, … Continue reading The Bootstrapper’s Plight: The Social Headaches of Building a Business
Finding the Critical Problem: How to Work on The Right Things
Reading Time: 9 minutes You start a new business that solves a problem. You create a unique solution to help your audience deal with a pain they’re feeling. Yet the company fails to take off, even though you have a good solution and excellent marketing material. People don’t want to pay for it. Why is that? I believe that … Continue reading Finding the Critical Problem: How to Work on The Right Things
How to Do Maximum Customer Support with Minimum Effort
Reading Time: 8 minutes When you are running a bootstrapped business, you have to do everything. Building the product, dealing with financials, marketing your solution. And then there is customer service. People are reaching out with questions. Sometimes they are frustrated because they have a deadline. Sometimes they want to chat. In any case, it will eat up your … Continue reading How to Do Maximum Customer Support with Minimum Effort
Finding a Market to Build a SaaS
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 … Continue reading Finding a Market to Build a SaaS
The 5 Books That Helped Build and Sell a Bootstrapped SaaS in Under Two Years
Reading Time: 11 minutes When I started out my career as a bootstrapped software entrepreneur, I wish there would have been something like The Bootstrapper’s Bookshelf. All I knew is that there were a lot of books about the wild world of Venture Capital and how to structure your startup so you could get some of that juicy venture … Continue reading The 5 Books That Helped Build and Sell a Bootstrapped SaaS in Under Two Years
Real and Imaginary Responsibilities of a Bootstrapped Founder
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 … Continue reading Real and Imaginary Responsibilities of a Bootstrapped Founder
Determining the Size of Your SaaS Market
Reading Time: 7 minutes When you’re starting a bootstrapped SaaS business, you have to find a painful problem to solve. For that, you have to find an audience first. But how do you figure out if the audience is big enough to support your business today and five years from now? There are three different approaches to determining this … Continue reading Determining the Size of Your SaaS Market
From Founding to Exit in Two Years: The FeedbackPanda Story
Reading Time: 2 minutes In 2017, my partner Danielle was teaching English as a Second Language online to Chinese children. She was working 12-hour days teaching while I was working as a Software Engineer for a German company in the IoT space. After teaching, Danielle would work for two extra hours to write Student Feedback for the parents of … Continue reading From Founding to Exit in Two Years: The FeedbackPanda Story
Scaling Your SaaS Without Scaling Your Anxiety
Reading Time: 8 minutes I started getting anxious whenever I heard the sound of an email coming in. What began as a genuine curiosity when we founded FeedbackPanda was now a feeling of dread. Was it another error message? Is the database having trouble again? Was it another customer reaching out? Were they writing in because some parts of … Continue reading Scaling Your SaaS Without Scaling Your Anxiety
