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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

#71

Post by tgtweak »

OJFord wrote: post #61
tgtweak wrote: post #51

I think people (and the founder) are focusing on yearly profits as their remuneration and comparing it to a salary... but the reality is you're creating a company that should be valued (and eventually sell) for 7-15X Earnings - and you really should be looking at that increase in value vs your increase in profits. In reality your net worth went up by over $1.5 million in the last year, in addition to earning 236k - t…

Advertise features you don't have and disappoint/infuriate those would-be users? Or are you suggesting a slightly less annoying 'coming soon' type landing page, where if it doesn't get enough traffic 'soon' just never comes?

on $10/day max spend you'll get 1-2 people that will visit the page, and you can put a "coming soon, leave an email and we'll let you know" then you can email them when it is deployed as well to recoup the adspend. If they're looking for a feature you don't have they're not really your customer today anyway. If they're looking for a feature that doesn't exist anywhere then they have no choice but to wait for it to be built.

Re: My sixth year as a bootstrapped founder

#72

Post by bad_good_guy »

tgtweak wrote: post #51

I think people (and the founder) are focusing on yearly profits as their remuneration and comparing it to a salary... but the reality is you're creating a company that should be valued (and eventually sell) for 7-15X Earnings - and you really should be looking at that increase in value vs your increase in profits. In reality your net worth went up by over $1.5 million in the last year, in addition to earning 236k - t…

Why should a company be assumed to be eventually sold? What the heck is that kind of perspective. The vast majority of small/medium companies are not sold - instead they provide regular income to their owners.

This sounds to me like typical toxic silicon valley startup mindset.

Re: My sixth year as a bootstrapped founder

#73

Post by DanHulton »

mym1990 wrote: post #66
DanHulton wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of things are getting superficially better (personal computing tech has never been more incredible), but there's a lot scary shit that is encroaching on the daily without sufficient plans in place to really deal with. Off the top of my head: - Global warming and how we don't seem to have any plans to a path to hit any of the less-than-apocalyptic warming targets, - Corporate regulatory capture, with more and mo…

Would you agree that whatever you are currently working on, either at Nodewood or evisort, is contributing to this superficial betterment of the world? Not to be dense but you are talking about empathy for people who are at the bottom of the human totem pole while posting on a tech forum while working on products that most likely don't contribute anything to actually making the world a better place. If you really car…

Friend, you're not going to get anywhere in life by being a disciple of Whataboutism, I promise you that.

Re: My sixth year as a bootstrapped founder

#74

Post by Aerbil313 »

OJFord wrote: post #70
Aerbil313 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> …but the reality is you're creating a company that should be valued (and eventually sell) for 7-15X Earnings - and you really should be looking at that increase in value vs your increase in profits. Muslim here. I think this is completely immoral and I don’t want to ever participate in stock market if/when I found a company. I want my business to be valued with the actual value it provides to people (the amount the…

What's the difference when the 'product' is the company itself? When a buyer comes along offering 7-15x the company's earnings for it, why is that not 'the actual value it provides' them?

Company acquisition is possible without the existence of a stock market. What I’m objecting to is the latter.

Re: My sixth year as a bootstrapped founder

#76

Post by robertlagrant »

bad_good_guy wrote: post #72
tgtweak wrote: post #51

I think people (and the founder) are focusing on yearly profits as their remuneration and comparing it to a salary... but the reality is you're creating a company that should be valued (and eventually sell) for 7-15X Earnings - and you really should be looking at that increase in value vs your increase in profits. In reality your net worth went up by over $1.5 million in the last year, in addition to earning 236k - t…

Why should a company be assumed to be eventually sold? What the heck is that kind of perspective. The vast majority of small/medium companies are not sold - instead they provide regular income to their owners. This sounds to me like typical toxic silicon valley startup mindset.

> This sounds to me like typical toxic silicon valley startup mindset.

I think this is naive cynicism, as it were. Lots of companies are started by people who eventually want to sell them, be it after 5 years or 50. Being biased against Silicon Valley won't give you a good handle on this stuff.

Re: My sixth year as a bootstrapped founder

#77

Post by tech_ken »

Nice work!! It's extremely motivating to see someone succeeding on this route, and especially with a hardware product. Did you start with any hardware foundations? Or was it something you had to learn as you pivoted?

As an aside, this is such a nifty product! Don't personally have a use for it (yet), but it definitely evokes gear lust.

Re: My sixth year as a bootstrapped founder

#78

Post by kuresov »

Aerbil313 wrote: post #74
OJFord wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the difference when the 'product' is the company itself? When a buyer comes along offering 7-15x the company's earnings for it, why is that not 'the actual value it provides' them?

Company acquisition is possible without the existence of a stock market. What I’m objecting to is the latter.

IPO/stock market was not mentioned anywhere in the post. It’s much more typical to be acquired than to go public.

Re: My sixth year as a bootstrapped founder

#79

Post by WrongAssumption »

zilti wrote: post #48
WrongAssumption wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Apple, Google, Amazon are every bit as bad, and Microsoft is still up there, too.

Assuming that’s true, is that counter to my statement? Mine was in response to someone saying it’s clear tech companies are getting worse, and your response to mine is they are just as bad? So also in your mind not clear they are getting worse, correct?

Re: My sixth year as a bootstrapped founder

#80

Post by vundercind »

OJFord wrote: post #61
tgtweak wrote: post #51

I think people (and the founder) are focusing on yearly profits as their remuneration and comparing it to a salary... but the reality is you're creating a company that should be valued (and eventually sell) for 7-15X Earnings - and you really should be looking at that increase in value vs your increase in profits. In reality your net worth went up by over $1.5 million in the last year, in addition to earning 236k - t…

Advertise features you don't have and disappoint/infuriate those would-be users? Or are you suggesting a slightly less annoying 'coming soon' type landing page, where if it doesn't get enough traffic 'soon' just never comes?

Yeah, it’s simply lying.

“Hussle” ethics of “if it works it’s OK” are so damn gross.

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