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10 years bootstrapped: €6.5M revenue with a team of 13

datocms.com

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Re: 10 years bootstrapped: €6.5M revenue with a team of 13

#81

Post by ericmcer »

gethly wrote: post #75

it's not hard to make something without funding, even by yourself, as long as you have the time and skill. but problem of the internet of today is saturation. you can have the best service or tool, much better than the number one on the market, but if you have no cash to burn on ads, you won't get anywhere. i have not read the history of this project but i would consider this as pure luck and nothing more(sadly). not…

Starting in 2015 it makes more sense why a big win for them this year was getting typescript setup.

Re: 10 years bootstrapped: €6.5M revenue with a team of 13

#82

Post by steffoz »

iagooar wrote: post #80

Wow! Congrats to you and the team. Fellow bootstrapper here, roughly in your ballpark - €4M+ revenue, team of 18, bootstrapped for 12 years. Only bootstrappers understand the bootstrap hustle ;) But what an amazing business you have built there - be proud, you deserve it. Let me share a personal founder story if I may: after 12 years of building the company, I decided to step down as CEO, moved on and spent the last…

Awesome to hear, thanks for sharing man! Enjoy! :)

Re: 10 years bootstrapped: €6.5M revenue with a team of 13

#83

Post by rexreed »

jwr wrote: post #46
rexreed wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

YES! I want to find more stories like this. Where can I find Bootstrappers or seedstrappers who have successfully scaled their companies past a few million in revenue with very small teams?

Why the "a few million in revenue" cutoff? In a solo-bootstrapped business you don't need a few million (USD or EUR) in revenue to run a successful business and live a really good life. In fact, depending on where you mostly live, much less than a single million might be plenty.

I'm looking for companies that are small by intent, but also looking to scale sustainably and grow beyond the capabilities of a single person. There are a lot of small businesses / solopreneurs / freelancers who work enough to get by or do a few hundred $K as a salary replacement, but aren't looking to build anything bigger. A lot of those companies also go by the wayside when the founder retires, gets hired, or something happens. And there's already a lot of content and sources for those types of solopreneur / single founder freelancers / side hustle type businesses.

I'm looking for the other stories of small teams scaling big. I'm basically separating side-hustles and solopreneurs as freelancers from a more sustainable business. Revenue is a cutoff as a way to differentiate, but doesn't have to be the only one.

For sure however, a team of 5 doing $20M implies something significant is happening at scale versus a solopreneur making what would otherwise be salary-replacement level money. Nothing wrong with that, of course, I love solopreneurship. Just trying to find those other stories, which are much harder to find.

Re: 10 years bootstrapped: €6.5M revenue with a team of 13

#84

Post by ericmcer »

kubb wrote: post #18
le-mark wrote: post #15

The website is pretty good. My initial reaction was “A CMS? How can yet another CMS be profitable”. The copy on the homepage explains it pretty well. Congrats on the success.

It’s funny because I have no concept of why this kind of infrastructure is needed and by whom. Replicating this success would be impossible for me because I wouldn’t understand that there are people out there with this need, and how to find them. Not that I need to replicate it. It would be cool to have that cashflow. But the chances of getting it are slim.

> DatoCMS started in 2015 as an internal tool for our italian web agency.

Just trying to sit down and come up with a successful business is really hard. The few friends I have who have made it are engineers who left a company to do something related to what they already did. I even had a few who took funding and sold to the company they left.

Re: 10 years bootstrapped: €6.5M revenue with a team of 13

#85

Post by i_am_a_peasant »

Doches wrote: post #4

> We're not bragging (okay, we're bragging a little) but it turns out that not burning through VC cash on ping-pong tables and "growth at all costs" actually works. Have an internet fist-bump from a fellow successful bootstrapper; this is the way, and you're calling it out!

Just give me 13 good (wo)men! And i’ll take the valley

Re: 10 years bootstrapped: €6.5M revenue with a team of 13

#86

Post by rexreed »

steffoz wrote: post #12
rexreed wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

YES! I want to find more stories like this. Where can I find Bootstrappers or seedstrappers who have successfully scaled their companies past a few million in revenue with very small teams?

I know https://tinyteams.xyz/ but it's not specific to bootstrapped companies!

Yeah and a lot of these are small only temporarily. Many of these startups are following the grow-at-all-costs VC philosophy that doesn't optimize for small team size. So I'm trying to find those alternate stories. Much harder to find, so when I see the post like this of OP's, I get excited. Hard to find stories of teams that are small by intent, but looking to scale big.

Re: 10 years bootstrapped: €6.5M revenue with a team of 13

#87

Post by botswana99 »

Congrats from a fellow software boostrapper (12 years in, similar size).

For a laugh, here is our founder chat from this weekend:

GB: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/englishpaulm_just-heard-from-...

CB: I'm glad we don't have to deal with that shit.:hankey:

EE: arg. yeah. I think about the funding route at times, but then see threads like this, and it’s a lot of yuck.

GB: Terrible. They did invest, but they just squeezed the founder out.

CB: How is the new vacation home?

Re: 10 years bootstrapped: €6.5M revenue with a team of 13

#88

Post by codegeek »

steffoz wrote: post #72
codegeek wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another one from a fellow bootstrapper. I have been doing it for 10+ years with a small team as well. Haven't hit the same revenue as them but still a very good business and has provided me everything I have for last 10 years keeping 100% full control. It is really really hard to do it over such a long period and admire anyone who has done it even better than I have.

Kudos to you! What’s your current venture, if I may ask?

Run an LMS product. https://academyofmine.com Working on a big pivot for next year. Funny but the pivot is to go more headless but for learning platform. Would follow your journey going forward.
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