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Lessons we learned while bootstrapping

kinsta.com

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Re: Lessons we learned while bootstrapping

#81

Post by goatherders »

wheresmyusern wrote: post #32

this blog post is a kind of guide to starting your own company and making millions of dollars. this is a little unrelated but i just find it funny to read this guide because its very convoluted. there is actually a much simpler guide that their guide is a derivation of. here is the actual guide: step one: be more intelligent than most people behind almost every business, behind almost every professional success and b…

I know lots of very successful business owners that aren't much more than normal/average when it comes to intelligence. They just work hard and provide a quality good or service to a market they understand. The END

Re: Lessons we learned while bootstrapping

#82

Post by beberlei »

dboreham wrote: post #72
telesilla wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>$100,000 each I think that's the key point made here, that these high salaries are not demanded if you aren't hiring on the U.S. west coast.

Parent may be saying that 100k is a reasonable per-clueful-person cost pretty much anywhere. I'm in the middle of the USA and I wouldn't expect to hire a competent engineer for less than $100k.

Anywhere in the us maybe, nowhere else in the world except maybe switzerland. The blog post specifically mentions being remote and not all in the US

Re: Lessons we learned while bootstrapping

#83

Post by andrewstuart »

mikeokner wrote: post #63
jcadam wrote: post #48

I’ve been building a SaaS product for the last year or so while working a day job and raising a family, and am only now close to the point of having something I consider beta-able ( https://www.contabulo.com ). I think I made the mistake of getting too fancy with the architecture (but designing architecture was too much fun to resist), so I’ve ended up with something that’s a collection of Clojure services on the bac…

> Contabulo is Coming Soon > We’re currently working hard on getting Contabulo ready and hope to launch a beta in the very near future. That's probably killing you. My advice would be to get rid of that immediately. It sounds like in general you need to reprioritize and refocus. You use the words "SaaS product," "project," "creative outlet," and "this thing" to describe your efforts thus far. "Things" don't make mone…

>> Stop worrying about architecture or feature development or closed betas and focus 100% on attracting and retaining high-quality customers.

Hang on... don't you need a product that people want to use and pay for? You can't just magic that up out of nothing. There's a necessary amount of development required isn't there to get something built that people are willing to shell out for.

Re: Lessons we learned while bootstrapping

#84

Post by [deleted] »

buf wrote: post #13

I've been bootstrapping https://www.castingcall.club for about 2 years now. Although I don't have a team (just me) and I've not in the 7-figure range (still in 6), a lot of the lessons from Kinsta holds true. I wanted to point out one bullet though: Automation My product is a SaaS product. I've automated every single thing possible from self-creating wikis to recommendations. I stepped away to visit Japan for 3 weeks…

[deleted]

Re: Lessons we learned while bootstrapping

#85

Post by jimnotgym »

HumanDrivenDev wrote: post #75
jimnotgym wrote: post #41

Please can we move on to a better term than 'bootstrapping'. It is non specific, means little to non-HN peeps and is just hard on the ears. How about self-funding?

As a fellow pedant who has complained about tech lingo before ('legacy' always makes my skin crawl a bit), what's wrong with 'bootstrapping'? The term has a fairly rich history in computing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bootstrapping#Computing

I'll take your 'legacy' and raise you an 'on-premise' (as in not in the cloud). I assume Oracle and Microsoft marketing want us to believe that premise is the singular of premises? I'm afraid I think different...

Bootstrapping does have a fairly rich history in computing. It has found an excellent meaning or two. Does it need another not quite analogous one? I dunno, I was in business and in Private Equity (at a very junior level) for a long while before I was in computers, and prefer the jargon of classic finance I guess. Likewise I don't like 'burn-rate' and 'runway' as the naive twins of 'cash-flows'. I could go on but my stuffy finance background is never likely to win me a popularity contest...

Re: Lessons we learned while bootstrapping

#86

Post by jacquesm »

vhost- wrote: post #65
tga wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just curious, how do you manage to post a comment in the wrong thread? Are you using some kind of client?

though, I can't remember what thread it was in, I saw this happen yesterday too.

This has been happening for a long long time but it is rare enough that it is super hard to track and fix.

Re: Lessons we learned while bootstrapping

#87

Post by jimnotgym »

Cyberdog wrote: post #74
jimnotgym wrote: post #41

Please can we move on to a better term than 'bootstrapping'. It is non specific, means little to non-HN peeps and is just hard on the ears. How about self-funding?

If posts involving domain-specific jargon were not permitted on HN, this would be a very barren place.

There was already business domain specific terms for all of the many things people regard as bootstrapping. In this case it seems like it is a mildly successful agency already earning enough to pay 4 people, realising they could make more money a different way. Maybe this is just business, jargonphiles might call it 'pivoting'. Seems a world away from someone else 'bootstrapping' without 2 dimes to rub together from their garage. Or indeed the truth of many more of these stories that read like 'I made a good bit of money at my old job so took a year off and started a saas business with significant sums of my own cash'. Maybe I'm just bitter.

I guess one thing people might want to bear in mind if they are not in the US, you may find senior finance people in the UK, for instance, totally bemused by this term if you find you want to stop bootstrapping and look for funding.

Re: Lessons we learned while bootstrapping

#88

Post by petercooper »

hawkice wrote: post #15
tw1010 wrote: post #9

Is it possible to block all websites from asking about enabling notifications? Every time I have allowed it have I regretted it, and every time I see the little dialog box asking for my permission do I feel slightly more desire to just close down the tab and read something else.

My recommendation: leave. Websites won't stop doing something intrusive and annoying until it costs them more than it gets them.

Unfortunately that hasn't worked for those infuriating "sign up for our email!" popovers/interstitials. Indeed, they seem to work better than ever.

Re: Lessons we learned while bootstrapping

#89

Post by petercooper »

raleigh_user wrote: post #52
blizkreeg wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

where do people go to get those graphics/illustrations created? they all look in the same style.

If anyone figures this out let me know. I want one

The way we do stuff like this is hunt around Shutterstock till we find the right style, look at what the illustrator's other files are, download the ones we like, and join together elements to make whatever we want. I imagine said illustrators could be commissioned as well, but we've never done that.

For example, I searched for "people working" and this was result #2 which is in a similar style: https://www.shutterstock.com/image-vector/set-isometric-busi... .. and the illustrator in question has numerous graphics along a similar style: https://www.shutterstock.com/g/yindee .. this was just the first one I found, there are hundreds of such illustrators, though. "isometric" is another good word to use in searches, BTW, see https://www.shutterstock.com/search?searchterm=isometric+ele... for example.

Re: Lessons we learned while bootstrapping

#90

Post by Axsuul »

treis wrote: post #67

I wonder how profitable these I make $X,XXX,XXX in revenue and here's how type posts are. I counted 17 people in one of their pictures and if you assume they cost $100,000 each, that's $1,700,000 in salary cost alone. Then there's 3 offices and all of the other overhead/costs they have to pay. I've worked on some hobby SAAS stuff and every time I look at the numbers to see what it would take to equal my salary the nu…

You're assuming that every person is an engineer that demands a high salary. I'm willing to put $100k on the fact that most likely only 1/3 are engineers and the rest are support and ancillary staff.
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