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Author here. I'm happy to answer any questions about this post, the sale process, or my time running TinyPilot.
did you have a salary?
I share more about the finances in my annual review posts:
https://mtlynch.io/solo-developer-year-6/#tinypilot-became-2...
“I immediately knew I was onto something.” Every successful bootstrapper who I know personally says this. The ultimate success didn’t happen instantly but the product/market fit was obvious on day one. And they didn’t iterate their way to that point. They walked away from whatever they were doing before, restarted with a blank sheet a paper, and the new thing immediately resonated.
Watch out for survivorship bias though, everybody might think that but a lot more still fail.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This mindset assumes that the only measure of success is monetary. If he left Google to try and get richer than staying at Google, then sure, he probably lost. However, he kept trying again before job hunting or returning to big tech. This tells me the monetary factor was smaller than something else. You mention the underrated educational experience in your last sentence, but there's so much more than that. He was pr…
How is healthcare tied to employment? Isn't it available to buy on the open market?
- get health insurance from your employer
- get covered by insurance of your spouse
- buy insurance from your own pocket
- don't buy insurance and risk loosing a lot of money in case of health emergency
Thanks for sharing! I'm currently trying out a bootstrapped hw project myself, and have enjoyed following along with your progress. You mentioned having trouble working with vendors, was this for ex: having boards assembled? I guess I've probably gotten "lucky" with relatively low scale so far, but been happy with the assorted online PCBA services.
>You mentioned having trouble working with vendors, was this for ex: having boards assembled? I guess I've probably gotten "lucky" with relatively low scale so far, but been happy with the assorted online PCBA services.
Oh, it was a challenge to find vendors for pretty much everything. The cost of switching vendors in hardware is pretty high once you've built a pipeline around a particular vendor, so it's important to have reliable vendors. But we had trouble finding vendors for PCB design, PCB assembly, third-party logistics, and packaging. We eventually found vendors that worked well, but even the good ones would have occasional wrinkles that needed smoothing out.
I wrote previously about how poorly I chose a vendor to do a redesign of TinyPilot's website:
Wild. I vaguely remember this founder spending an obscene amount of money on some boutique firm to give homepage a small update. Seems he exited the Google grind about 6 years ago. I guess salaries were between $180-250K during that time frame. Google grinder for 6 years: $1,080,000-$1,500,000 Entrepreneur: “$920k over four years (with sale)”, but doesn’t include the 2 bombs he had prior to successful exit. (None of…
Holy hell the pessimism in this thread over a life-changing amount of money for 99% of people. > should have stayed at Google You should feel privileged that you've never been "stuck" at a job that you don't find personally interesting and stimulating. Wasting your life to see the number in your bank account increase.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This mindset assumes that the only measure of success is monetary. If he left Google to try and get richer than staying at Google, then sure, he probably lost. However, he kept trying again before job hunting or returning to big tech. This tells me the monetary factor was smaller than something else. You mention the underrated educational experience in your last sentence, but there's so much more than that. He was pr…
Money is time, and time that is free to choose is more freedom to spend your time how you please, and work on things that may not need to have a financial half.
"More freedom" sounds amazing right up until the point you remember that you aren't getting a salary every month but still need to pay rent and buy food and stuff...
Wow, 15% broker fee! Didn’t know brokers charge that much
If they bring you the buyer, that feels fair. But in this case, it seems the buyer found him thru his own content, which is wild.
I see how it's confusing because I say in the post that the buyer read my retrospectives, but that was after he had discovered the company through Quiet Light.
I've just edited the article to clarify that the buyer discovered my blog from Quiet Light.
Digestively, how did you handle all that dessert in such a short timeframe?
It was over three days (dinner, dinner, lunch), and I was splitting them with friends. Although, I do love dessert and probably could have eaten those all solo.
Just wanted to say Thanks for that. Best wishes in becoming a new parent.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
How is healthcare tied to employment? Isn't it available to buy on the open market?
In US buying medical services without insurance is very expensive. You choices are: - get health insurance from your employer - get covered by insurance of your spouse - buy insurance from your own pocket - don't buy insurance and risk loosing a lot of money in case of health emergency
It is expensive, but not insanely so. Family of four, living in Oregon, non-smoking, our premium is ~$1k/month. Granted it’s a high deductible ($12k), but it protects us from the kind of catastrophic emergency that could wipe out our savings. We are fortunate to not have expensive, ongoing conditions.
Granted, $12k/year is a lot for less affluent families, but government subsidies can bring the premium down considerably if your income is low enough.
And while the coverage is far inferior to my old FAANG luxury health plans, it still works well enough.