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My sixth year as a bootstrapped founder

mtlynch.io

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Re: My sixth year as a bootstrapped founder

#21

Post by WrongAssumption »

spencerflem wrote: post #12
abfan1127 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

in what sense is it getting worse? While there may be local minima, I'd argue that its the best its ever been. News has always been pessimistic because negative emotions are easier to trigger to drive attention which pays the bills.

Whether the world as a whole is getting worse is debatable, but I think it's very clear that tech companies are

Is it clear? Microsoft of old? IBM of old? AT&T of old? Juggernauts with abusive monopoly power that tech companies today could only dream of.

Re: My sixth year as a bootstrapped founder

#22

Post by mtlynch »

belter wrote: post #11

I have two of these and can say it's a great product with great support by the creator.

Thanks so much! I'm really glad to hear that.

I take the support really seriously because I get so frustrated with most companies' customer service and technical support. When customers contact TinyPilot, I always want them to feel like they're talking to a real person who's knowledgeable and making real effort to help them. It's nice to hear that this comes through in the experience.

Re: My sixth year as a bootstrapped founder

#24

Post by thomastay »

mtlynch wrote: post #2

Author here. As always, I'm happy to take any feedback or answer any questions about this post.

Hi mtlynch, I just wanna say that your post brought back a lot of memories for me. I distinctly remember reading your original post back in 2018. I remember feeling that I really hoped you would succeed since your complaints were so authentic. When I was reading this post, I was like - wait, i think i remember this post - and it's you! Happy to hear that you've made it with tinypilot

Re: My sixth year as a bootstrapped founder

#25

Post by mtlynch »

havefunbesafe wrote: post #14
mtlynch wrote: post #2

Author here. As always, I'm happy to take any feedback or answer any questions about this post.

Why the sharp drop in adspend?

Good question! I actually hadn't noticed it changed that much, but you're right.

The biggest difference was that in 2022, I hired a paid ads consultant to set up ads automation for me on a few different platforms. That had a high up-front cost, but then it was inexpensive to maintain those ads in 2023.

I also spent money experimenting on more channels in 2022, so in 2023, I cut out spending on the ones that weren't earning a positive ROI.

Re: My sixth year as a bootstrapped founder

#26

Post by beoberha »

Man this is really cool. The transparency is awesome. Shipping a hardware product as a bootstrapped founder sounds (at least) an order of magnitude harder than a software product.

Edit: oh and congrats on the success this year! I’d have to imagine it feels insanely rewarding!

Re: My sixth year as a bootstrapped founder

#27

Post by mtlynch »

beoberha wrote: post #26

Man this is really cool. The transparency is awesome. Shipping a hardware product as a bootstrapped founder sounds (at least) an order of magnitude harder than a software product. Edit: oh and congrats on the success this year! I’d have to imagine it feels insanely rewarding!

Thanks for reading and for the kind words!

>Shipping a hardware product as a bootstrapped founder sounds (at least) an order of magnitude harder than a software product.

Yeah, it ended up being way harder than I expected.

I actually didn't even mean to make a hardware product. In the beginning, I thought people would just buy off-the-shelf components and pay me to make nice software to tie everything together.

It became pretty obvious early on that people were a lot more interested in a pre-made hardware solution than a DIY project with ready-made software. And I'm glad I made it to the point of profitability and worked hard at it, but I also definitely got lucky a lot. There are so many more existential threats to a hardware business, especially in the early days.

Re: My sixth year as a bootstrapped founder

#28

Post by keiferski »

BadHumans wrote: post #8
marklubi wrote: post #4

So good to see some actual Startup News on here. I miss the old days of this site when things were more optimistic and less click-bait.

[flagged]

I think it’s more that the startup ecosystem has matured considerably since ~2007. Starting a company back then was still kind of a counter cultural thing, now it’s a common career path.

Re: My sixth year as a bootstrapped founder

#29

Post by mtlynch »

thomastay wrote: post #24
mtlynch wrote: post #2

Author here. As always, I'm happy to take any feedback or answer any questions about this post.

Hi mtlynch, I just wanna say that your post brought back a lot of memories for me. I distinctly remember reading your original post back in 2018. I remember feeling that I really hoped you would succeed since your complaints were so authentic. When I was reading this post, I was like - wait, i think i remember this post - and it's you! Happy to hear that you've made it with tinypilot

Thanks for reading, and that's really nice to hear. That quitting Google post ended up being more popular than I ever expected, so from time to time, people tell me, "Oh, you're that quitting Google guy. Glad it worked out!"
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