
Hi! I’m Arvid. I empower founders & creators who want to build calm & sustainable businesses in public.
The Bootstrapped Founder is the home of my Twitter course Find your Following, the books 📗Zero to Sold and 📘The Embedded Entrepreneur, which is an audience-driven book teaching you how to build an audience-driven business.
You will also find the Bootstrapper’s Bookshelf, the Bootstrapped Founder Podcast, YouTube channel, and the Bootstrapped Founder Newsletter.
Learn how to build a business, build an audience for it, and stay sane while doing it. No BS, no “growth hacks.” Just actionable and useful advice.
Here are my most recent blog posts:
Should Freelancers Offer Free Trials?
Reading Time: 6 minutes Recently, I have gotten a lot of offers from freelancers and consultants to do some work for me for free. In an ideal world, we’d offer our services to a prospect, and they’d gladly pay for them. But the reality is quite different: many freelancers have a hard time finding clients, and some have come … Continue reading Should Freelancers Offer Free Trials?
Choose Your Own Adventure: Creator, Curator, Commentator, or Connector
Reading Time: 8 minutes People love to put other people in boxes. Metaphorically, of course. We do love our categories and classifications. On social media, we can leverage one of four major roles: we can be creators, curators, commentators, and connectors. Focusing on one of these roles will provide a clear path toward building an equally focused audience. Let’s … Continue reading Choose Your Own Adventure: Creator, Curator, Commentator, or Connector
Scalable Customer Service for Bootstrappers
Reading Time: 5 minutes When we sold FeedbackPanda back in 2019 for a life-changing amount of money, we still ran it as a two-person business. Although we had over 5000 customers at that point —which generated over $55.000 in monthly recurring revenue, we didn’t need a dedicated customer support position in our EdTech SaaS business. We built a highly … Continue reading Scalable Customer Service for Bootstrappers
Managing Expectations: Making Good (on) Promises.
Reading Time: 8 minutes Expectation management. What is that? It sure sounds like mind control. I don’t think my expectations are anything that someone else can manage. Nobody can dive into my mind and magically alter what I believe will happen. The only thing you can do to impact what I expect is to make promises. There is a … Continue reading Managing Expectations: Making Good (on) Promises.
You Don’t Need to be an Extrovert to Build in Public — an Introvert’s Perspective
Reading Time: 4 minutes One of the major reasons people don’t start building in public is that they don’t want to stand in the proverbial spotlight. They don’t want to be exposed. Building in public is by definition a public act, and if you’re anything like me, you prefer keeping a low profile. At least, I usually do. But … Continue reading You Don’t Need to be an Extrovert to Build in Public — an Introvert’s Perspective
Why Founders End Up Unemployable
Reading Time: 7 minutes In most entrepreneurs’ lives, there comes a point where they jokingly claim to be “unemployable.” It usually happens in the middle of a conversation about the benefits and drawbacks of having a boss. After setting out on their first self-directed business journey, many founders have a hard time imagining themselves back on the clock as … Continue reading Why Founders End Up Unemployable
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