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
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 a Market to Build a SaaS
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
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
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
From Founding to Exit in Two Years: The FeedbackPanda Story
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
Determining the Size of Your SaaS Market
When you're starting a bootstrapped SaaS business, you first have to find a painful problem to solve. You then have to find an audience for your product. 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 … Continue reading Determining the Size of Your SaaS Market
Scaling Your SaaS Without Scaling Your Anxiety
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
How to Do Maximum Customer Support with Minimum Effort
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