My eighth year as a bootstrapped founder

It's hard to say. I think it could go either way.

My optimistic take is that it has a similar effect to cloud computing on solo bootstrapping. If you tried to start a SaaS company in 2005, you'd have a hard time because in addition to knowing software, you'd also have to know how to provision servers in a data center, so you didn't see a lot of one-person software success stories from that era. But then with cloud computing, it radically lowered the barrier to entry, and there were lots of one-person SaaS businesses making $1M+/yr.

So, the best case for me is if that AI increases the power of solo bootstrappers even more so if you're great at software but terrible at website design / running ads, you don't have to hire people to help you anymore, and you can achieve more by yourself.

The pessimistic outcome is that it becomes less profitable to be a bootstrapped founder because the reduced barrier to entry means you're competing with 10-100x as many people and that companies are more comfortable building in-house tools with AI rather than purchasing B2B SaaS products.[0]

I actually have a hard time imagining B2B SaaS dying because AI makes it easy to roll your own tools. I feel like even if you reduced dev cost to nearly zero, there's still headache of maintaining an app. Like, for my last business, we were paying $200/mo for HelpScout to manage support emails. If one of the devs said they spun up a reimplementation of HelpScout over the weekend that we could run for $2/mo, I'd still say no because the cost of managing it internally is at least $200/mo of people's focus.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46888441

[0] https://softwaremisadventures.com/p/michael-lynch-on-quittin... (2022, two years into the business)

[1] https://softwaremisadventures.com/p/michael-lynch-indie-hack... (2024, just after I sold)

I didn't have a particularly big audience. I had about 2k mailing list subscribers on my main blog, but a pretty small percentage of them purchased. And I had something like 600 subscribers for the book because I've been saying I'd write it since 2021, but all I had was a mailing list.

> How did you go about building that audience and list, and what helped the most to doing that?

I haven't been focused on growing the list that much.

My main goal right now is to get feedback from readers and use it to improve the book. Once the book is done and I can't think of ways to improve it, I'll probably switch to focusing more on finding more places to find paying readers.

> Which lists / audience converted the most for your book offer

I find the most paying readers from HN, actually. I don't think it's the most in terms of conversion percentage, but it's the most in absolute terms because HN is so big. And then there are secondary effects of something doing well on HN because people share the link on other, smaller sites and social media.

> how did you promote or otherwise let folks know about your book?

The thing that's always worked best for me is writing blog posts that I hope my target audience will find interesting. So the thing that's worked for the book is adapting parts of the book to standalone blog posts and sharing those online.[0] A few of those posts did well on HN because I tried to make them interesting to developers interested in writing/blogging.[1]

> What was the compelling ask to pre-order a book?

Haha, maybe I should craft that more. It's mainly that they get to read more of whatever samples they've already hopefully found useful.

My pitch for early access is that early readers get to read it and ask me questions and help shape the book.

> And, how do you plan to publish the book?

I'm already publishing it as a PDF/epub that I sell through Stripe.

I might eventually do a print run or sell Amazon, but I hate dealing with Amazon and physical products, so I'd have to be really confident it would have a big impact on sales.

[0] https://refactoringenglish.com/chapters/

[1] https://refactoringenglish.com/tools/hn-popularity/domain/?d...

> That being said, you do get the consistency of independence and autonomy. As I watch my peers deal with crappy work environments, losing their jobs, and other bullshit, I just keep chugging along: self-directed and happy to not have to answer to anyone.

Yes, I completely agree.

Bootstrapping, you realize that employment smooths out a lot of issues for you. Like if you're sick for two weeks as an employee, maybe it hurts your OKRs, but you'll be fine. If you're sick for two weeks as a solo founder, that can be catastrophic. And if you need to do something like take parental leave for six months, the company can't just continue on without you like it could if you worked for a large company.

But as you said, you get the consistency of being your own boss and directing your own time, which more than makes up for it for me.