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We bootstrapped to $11M in ARR

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Re: We bootstrapped to $11M in ARR

#151

Post by vram22 »

brianwawok wrote: post #128
catillac wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is “SaaS” traditionally considered a niche like the others? The concept seems very broad as opposed to others like Fintech or Healthcare. I would consider a category like “APIs” to be overbroad, and SaaS seems to be similar. I’m very open to being wrong though.

SaaS is all over. I can think of 100 SaaS companies by me in Indiana, and I didn't look that hard. I think it's not an Astin niche...

>SaaS is all over.

Yes. By its very nature.

Plus, SaaS is more like a horizontal niche (though I would really call it a layer, with, e.g. shrink-wrapped software being another horizontal layer), while fintech, healthcare etc. are vertical layers[1]. In fact, the industry jargon term (outside of the narrow world of tech, at least), is "verticals". Ask any marketing guy. Verticals are usually defined by the business domain they apply to.

[1] E.g.: you can have a fintech SaaS and a healthcare shrinkwrapped app, and vice versa, and so on.

Re: We bootstrapped to $11M in ARR

#152

Post by jeffreyrogers »

bootstrapper101 wrote: post #138
jeffreyrogers wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A couple of years ago I started writing down ideas whenever they popped into my head. Didn't really make a conscious effort to brainstorm them or anything, but after a while they start becoming a frequent thing. I probably get a couple a week and now have a really long list of things. Some are obviously bad, others require too much outside knowledge or equipment I don't have, but maybe 10-20% are promising and doable…

Nothing beats just getting down and building something end to end. As you do it more and more, you get better and faster. I just came up with an analogy of trying to be successful at startup: Imagine someone who is just born in prehistoric rugged terrain who wants to reach some magical place. You don't know even how to crawl. There is some food and clues all over the place about how to reach the magical place. You ha…

Thanks, that's a helpful analogy. I appreciate you taking the time to comment in this thread, your posts have been really informative/useful.

Re: We bootstrapped to $11M in ARR

#153

Post by TheMagicHorsey »

jampa wrote: post #3

Nice writeup! Speaking as someone that tried to be a founder from Brazil: I imagine that making it on Silicon Valley must be hard task on itself but making in an underdeveloped country makes odds stacked against you. We compete with companies founded with people that have access to clients with way more purchasing power and better supply pipeline. I'm a bit curious on how the team got overcame this issues, and would…

Read about the success of Zoho. An Indian company with no funding that has bootstrapped to billions in revenue. And they are doing development in small towns in India. Talk about overcoming the obstacles of an underdeveloped country!

Re: We bootstrapped to $11M in ARR

#154

Post by hinkley »

cosmodisk wrote: post #92

One thing I don't understand is this notion that any startup can happen only in the valley,or if someone starts there, it's 100 times easier. The main benefit,which the US startups take for granted is the market size. You don't need to learn German, French ,or Spanish just to sell to your neighbors.

When I was coming up there was a huge brain drain going on from the midwest. A lot of those people ended up in Seattle, because of Seattle, NYC and SF, Seattle seems the smallest culture change (that is of course debatable, especially with the Seattle Freeze). Since then Chicago has become eminent in fintech, so I expect some people end up there, but that's not everybody's speed either.

Saint Louis is also pretty centrally located from an Internet infrastructure standpoint and as far as I'm aware they've not amounted to much of anything from an IT standpoint since ftp.wustl.edu. It looks like Boeing, Square, and a bunch of banks have offices there.

That may have to do with secondary issues like the quality of education in Missouri. Undergrads might not give a damn but founders and VCs might care quite a bit.

Re: We bootstrapped to $11M in ARR

#155

Post by teachrdan »

_xnmw wrote: post #150

The best part? Every penny of that $11M ARR is yours to spend however you wish. Nobody's going to question you if you take your company's money and spend it on a private helicopter or a summer beach home in Cyprus (all easily affordable for $11M). If you had accepted even a tiny pre-seed investment, you wouldn't have that freedom - the company's money is not yours, and although you could live comfortably on executive…

In the US context, of the company is an LLC then you can't just spend its money like it's yours without "piercing the veil" and jeopardizing your LLC status.

But point taken! You don't have to answer to VC whose interests don't necessarily align with yours.

Re: We bootstrapped to $11M in ARR

#156

Post by TheMagicHorsey »

warent wrote: post #14
bootstrapper101 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I run one of these companies. USD 50M+ ARR, USD 20M+ profit. 3 people company. Could grow 10x if we want to. But we are enjoying staying low and enjoying our family lives. Excellent article by the Canary guys. They seem like really honest people. We didn't raise any money. Only focus was how to do faster iterations. By the time 25 of my ideas didn't succeed, every iteration became very fast. Idea to launch in 3 month…

Am I the only one reading a significant amount of ego and humblebrag from this post? It's pretty off-putting and distracting from where there could be value.

I didn't read any such tone. He's quite fact oriented.

You may want to introspect into what you are bringing into the reading as your own context.

Re: We bootstrapped to $11M in ARR

#157

Post by wpietri »

_xnmw wrote: post #150

The best part? Every penny of that $11M ARR is yours to spend however you wish. Nobody's going to question you if you take your company's money and spend it on a private helicopter or a summer beach home in Cyprus (all easily affordable for $11M). If you had accepted even a tiny pre-seed investment, you wouldn't have that freedom - the company's money is not yours, and although you could live comfortably on executive…

The first one is only true for a solo founder. Given that they said "we", the company's money is still the company's money.

Also, it's not clear to me that avoiding accountability is really a plus for a startup. Basically the first thing I did when I was exploring a solo founder/bootstrapped thing was to hire a startup-focused coach to serve as an accountability partner.

Re: We bootstrapped to $11M in ARR

#158

Post by radihuq »

wpietri wrote: post #157
_xnmw wrote: post #150

The best part? Every penny of that $11M ARR is yours to spend however you wish. Nobody's going to question you if you take your company's money and spend it on a private helicopter or a summer beach home in Cyprus (all easily affordable for $11M). If you had accepted even a tiny pre-seed investment, you wouldn't have that freedom - the company's money is not yours, and although you could live comfortably on executive…

The first one is only true for a solo founder. Given that they said "we", the company's money is still the company's money. Also, it's not clear to me that avoiding accountability is really a plus for a startup. Basically the first thing I did when I was exploring a solo founder/bootstrapped thing was to hire a startup-focused coach to serve as an accountability partner.

A startup-focused coach sounds incredibly valuable. How did you find your coach?

Re: We bootstrapped to $11M in ARR

#159

Post by mritchie712 »

_xnmw wrote: post #150

The best part? Every penny of that $11M ARR is yours to spend however you wish. Nobody's going to question you if you take your company's money and spend it on a private helicopter or a summer beach home in Cyprus (all easily affordable for $11M). If you had accepted even a tiny pre-seed investment, you wouldn't have that freedom - the company's money is not yours, and although you could live comfortably on executive…

Shameless related plug: I run https://www.trypaper.io/ which helps SaaS companies find non-dilutive and non-VC funding. Bootstrap doesn't need to mean "no outside capital". There are capital sources out there that align with what most bootstrappers value (e.g. retaining control of their company, calm growth, etc.).

Re: We bootstrapped to $11M in ARR

#160

Post by ipaddr »

omarhaneef wrote: post #131
steveklabnik wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People have been saying this for a very long time. I did a startup in Pittsburgh back in ~2009, and this was exactly what everyone was saying. My cofounder is still doing startups in the same space(ish), but in the Bay Area now. That doesn't mean it won't ever come to pass, but I am still skeptical. (And I live in Austin now... but the startup I work for is still fundamentally based in the Bay.)

This is a strong argument: people have been talking about the distribution of work with every new invention (phone call, fax, email, and now video conferencing). And they don't just mean moving from San Fran to Austin (where people speak the same language, and you can hire citizens, and the currency is the same and you drive on the same side of the street), but to India and China. And yet, and yet, and yet the same c…

Things have been changing. Hollywood makes fewer movies than ever before and most of the work has moved elsewhere. Tv shows for networks are still made there but with so many additional channels more shows are being made elsewhere.

Pittsburgh,Detriot were never in a position to overtake the valley. California offers too much and the valley is not moving to another citt. But less companies feel the need to be in the valley because the internet provides a virtual space.

Oil is being replaced with renewable power so that shift won't affect who the oil capital is but it will reduce it's imporance.

Finance and New York fit culturally well together like California dreams and high tech startups.

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