Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

My sixth year as a bootstrapped founder

mtlynch.io

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

301–310 of 339 posts

Re: My sixth year as a bootstrapped founder

#301

Post by ipaddr »

rjzzleep wrote: post #287
iepathos wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These people actually do grow on a tree called Google. All the Google layoffs means there are more smart former google engineers than ever currently available for hire. More importantly, doesn't have to be a former google engineer, any smart engineer can do what he currently does, google didn't teach him anything special they just hire smart engineers when they find them.

There’s a reason they were laid off. I find this mind boggling, I’ve met so many mediocre and low performers that are still highly sought after by simple virtue of having done nothing at faang or Stanford. It’s basically the software engineering professions McKinsey. Everything they touch is a huge money sink with no real added value and probably long term damaging to society and yet somehow they all keep climbing th…

I agree with you overall. But the reason someone is laid off mostly likely has no bearing on ability or actions. Not having the ability to influence layoff decisions doesn't mean you were a bad engineer or providing more value than others

Re: My sixth year as a bootstrapped founder

#302

Post by lukoktonos »

ilaksh wrote: post #246
lukoktonos wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just bought a mini PC for $350 that has 32gb of ram, a windows 11 license, and is not much bigger than these devices by the looks of it. People who find this small device useful must just not want to spend their (likely high $/hour) time with mundane things getting their expensive toy home servers working or something

I can't tell if you are trying to prove my point or discount it. But you can't justify $300 for installing and configuring free software. As you say, you can get a much more powerful computer for even less than they are charging.

I was agreeing with you that it seems overpriced and relying on a niche market that doesn't care about being cost effective hardware-wise.

Re: My sixth year as a bootstrapped founder

#303

Post by j45 »

awhitby wrote: post #94
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…

You're missing something. From the post: > I don’t draw a salary, so the total amount I earned from TinyPilot in 2023 was $236k. and > Result: I worked 35-40 hours per week, a reduction from previous years, and traveled more than any previous year. This is a person who is effectively full-time CEO of this business and whose market salary is likely at least $236k. If they sold the business, the new owners would have t…

Valuations for vc’s acquiring is very different than private equity firms acquiring a business like this.

If you build something that makes 100k/y it can sell for 7-15x or that.

Re: My sixth year as a bootstrapped founder

#304

Post by ipaddr »

hinkley wrote: post #225
paulddraper wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Businesses sell for 0x and Infinityx all the time. There are countless examples of that. But bootstrapped business with growth rate for 7x+ (non-trivial) revenue are uncommon. 4x may be "ouch" for a VC but not a bootstrapper.

The last startup I was at that sold 'only' made the owners millionaires, when they were hoping to retire. If you're in your thirties or forties, a million bucks won't even get you a school teacher's lifestyle for the rest of your life. A million bucks makes the rest of your work life low-stress, but not non-existent. You still have to work, you just don't have to worry about paying rent, or getting exploited by your…

A million after taxes is worth 20 years at 100k after taxes (50% rate).

Investing a million today say in real estate over 20 years will give you money to live on while you rent and a the property can be sold for double in 20 years. Repeat and this strategy would bring increasing wealth for a 20 year old.

Re: My sixth year as a bootstrapped founder

#306

Post by mil22 »

benknight87 wrote: post #274

This shows that going out on your own is not always strictly better or more rewarding. As a software engineer you can simply rent your skills and be part of a bigger team and company that's arguably doing something more impactful than building widgets. The finances work out better too. Market salary as a software engineer is easily in the 200-300k range and increases over time with experience and skill. You can also…

Going out on your own may not be always strictly better or more rewarding, but this founder story is just one datapoint. Since most companies have an employee equity pool that is sized at only 10-20%, working for them is by definition giving 80-90% of the value you create away to the founders and investors. The rewards of either starting a company or being a sole proprietor (e.g. indie dev or consultant), can therefore be expected to be very substantial, on average, perhaps even 5-10x per unit time worked, and that's not including the secondary non-financial benefits of not working for someone else (e.g. freedom, autonomy, etc.). I do wish more people were aware of this principle, because the willingness of engineers in the aggregate to acquiesce to 10-20% ownership is why VCs and founders become so inappropriately rich by comparison. Just my 2c.

Re: My sixth year as a bootstrapped founder

#307

Post by mardifoufs »

kasey_junk wrote: post #298
mardifoufs wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uh? Islam says nothing about the stock market. Participating in businesses and having shares is completely halal, and encouraged actually. That's the good way of generating long term revenue, as opposed to lending or profiting from interests. The very first Muslims and the prophet himself PBUH were merchants and traders, and business owners.

I’ve met people that believe that any extension of credit that has a premium attached to it is against the rules. And that the very real fact that any transaction on a modern exchange involves the extension of credit with a premium, leads to a situation where the exchanges themselves are forbidden. I don’t have any opinion on if this interpretation squares with their religion but it is certainly true that stock excha…

Mhmm I can see that argument being quite valid for trading stocks in general. As in, a actively trading since it inherently involves margin and leverage at one point or another, but just owning a share of a publicly owned corporation is a bit different imo.

As you said it depends on interpretation, and I think it depends but it's not as clear cut as the comment I was replying to could make it seem for others.

Re: My sixth year as a bootstrapped founder

#309

Post by elbear »

mtlynch wrote: post #296
elbear wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

| The thing I found comforting was reading stories and listening to podcast interviews with other founders where they talked about how many failures they had before they landed on the right business. Can you recommend some?

The first 50 episodes of the Indie Hackers podcast had a big influence on how I approached bootstrapping. The episodes that stood out in particular are: - Pieter Levels: https://www.indiehackers.com/podcast/043-pieter-levels-of-no... - Tracy Osborn: https://www.indiehackers.com/podcast/029-tracy-osborn-of-hel... Josh Pigford (who sold Baremetrics for $4M) has also documented all of his failed ventures: https://joshpi…

Thank you!

Re: My sixth year as a bootstrapped founder

#310

Post by mixmastamyk »

benknight87 wrote: post #274

This shows that going out on your own is not always strictly better or more rewarding. As a software engineer you can simply rent your skills and be part of a bigger team and company that's arguably doing something more impactful than building widgets. The finances work out better too. Market salary as a software engineer is easily in the 200-300k range and increases over time with experience and skill. You can also…

Been doing this for a decade+ and never nor peers are making 200k. Getting close after a lot of inflation though. Lucrative jobs exist but are not available because they simply won’t allow you to join.

This is kind of like saying, just be a successful actor. It’s significantly not up to you.

Post reply on HN