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
Category: Bootstrapping
Churn, Retention, and Revenue: What Makes Customers Stick Around and Why That’s Important
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
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)
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 the Critical Problem: How to Work on The Right Things
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
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
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
