> Didn't get a tech partner: I'm more of a designer first
> and developer second...
Bootstrapping a Software Product
31–40 of 60 posts
Re: Bootstrapping a Software Product
#32Author of the deck here. I'm actually in the middle of evolving these into a book. http://startingandsustaining.com Happy to answer any questions anybody might have.
Great deck! What business entity type (sole proprietorship, llc, ...) did you end up going with and has it changed over time?
It's an LLC, but for better or worse, that's not a decision that we put a lot of time into. So it's probably not a meaningful data point.
Re: Bootstrapping a Software Product
#33> Didn't get a tech partner: I'm more of a designer first > and developer second... Garett, you seem to be a "designer who programs"/"programmer who designs"... Do you think of this as an advantage, or a limitation?
It's both. The upside is that I didn't need to find a designer or developer to build it, but the downside is that it's a lot of work to keep up with all of the skills that I need. Ruby, Rails, design, front-end development, MySQL, servers, etc.
Fortunately, as we've grown, we've been able to contract work to friends who are experts in each of the areas, but it can be rather daunting at first.
The other downside is that when designing, I always begin to think about how design decisions will trickle down the front-end to the application to the database and sometimes even to the server. As a result, it's hard to just design and implement. I'm always caught up thinking about implementation even when I'm working in Photoshop.
These days, the biggest benefit is that even though I'm far from an expert in any of the areas, I can competently navigate all of the topics and maintain a pretty holistic view of both the business and the product. That makes it much easier to effectively coordinate everyone as the team grows.
Re: Bootstrapping a Software Product
#34Author of the deck here. I'm actually in the middle of evolving these into a book. http://startingandsustaining.com Happy to answer any questions anybody might have.
You've put together a great deck here, thanks for sharing it!
Can you give us a few rough details of what your initial customer acquisition strategy was? (Or even something a bit more current, although I realise that might not be information you'd like to share).
From what I can tell, Sifter is in a very, very competitive market, and I'd be fascinated to know how you gained customers - and potential customers' interest - when there are so many choices out there for them to choose from.
Re: Bootstrapping a Software Product
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you don't mind me asking, have you hit your goal of earning your pre-Sifter salary yet? In the slides it looked like you were close. Also, is your partner on full time as well or still part time in your venture? I have a co-founder that I'm starting a small business with and we frequently talk about what level of reduced salary we would accept to come on full time to grow the business.
I have finally hit my pre-Sifter salary. We could have technically afforded it a while ago, but we only recently decided to make the adjustment. Of course, that was my salary 5 years ago, and from what I've gathered, I'm still way under what I could be making elsewhere--especially if you factor in benefits. Keith, my partner, has never been full-time. He's always been involved at about 5-10 hours per month, and that'…
You do you decide Keith's salary? I'm not looking for numbers, more like the logic behind it (number of hours put in?, something else?). I will have this "problem" soon.
Thanks for sharing your knowledge!
Re: Bootstrapping a Software Product
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
Great deck! What business entity type (sole proprietorship, llc, ...) did you end up going with and has it changed over time?
It's an LLC, but for better or worse, that's not a decision that we put a lot of time into. So it's probably not a meaningful data point.
Have you personally had any problems with this setup? It sounds like for the scope of your company it would work well.
Re: Bootstrapping a Software Product
#37Author of the deck here. I'm actually in the middle of evolving these into a book. http://startingandsustaining.com Happy to answer any questions anybody might have.
You've put together a great deck here, thanks for sharing it! Can you give us a few rough details of what your initial customer acquisition strategy was? (Or even something a bit more current, although I realise that might not be information you'd like to share). From what I can tell, Sifter is in a very, very competitive market, and I'd be fascinated to know how you gained customers - and potential customers' intere…
I answered this in a little more detail further down the page, but the short version is that I didn't really have a customer acquisition strategy. I just had a little overlap from my blogging and a product that I wanted to build. The rest was pretty basic. Do things and tell people. By talking about it, I was able to reach a fair amount of people who were interested and start from there.
In terms of a competitive market, I really just kind of went the opposite direction from the established options out there. The truth is that those other apps were and are great for some teams doing large complex software development projects, but there was a whole other group of smaller teams that didn't need all of the advanced features that those big players offered. I thought the world need something between a todo list and those options, so I tried to fill in the gap.
Re: Bootstrapping a Software Product
#38Author of the deck here. I'm actually in the middle of evolving these into a book. http://startingandsustaining.com Happy to answer any questions anybody might have.
You had some pretty specific time estimates (i.e. 8760 hours in the Obsessively worried about downtime slide). What were you using to track your time?
Re: Bootstrapping a Software Product
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's an LLC, but for better or worse, that's not a decision that we put a lot of time into. So it's probably not a meaningful data point.
Have you personally had any problems with this setup? It sounds like for the scope of your company it would work well.
No problems yet. (Knock on wood.) We never had any ambition plans of raising money or going public, so we just wanted the simplest structure that wouldn't require extra costs or overhead. There might be tax implications, but that's more the realm of my business partner, so I'm not really qualified to offer any extensive advice there beyond the fact that you'd want to consult an accountant in addition to a lawyer when incorporating.
Re: Bootstrapping a Software Product
#40Author of the deck here. I'm actually in the middle of evolving these into a book. http://startingandsustaining.com Happy to answer any questions anybody might have.
You had some pretty specific time estimates (i.e. 8760 hours in the Obsessively worried about downtime slide). What were you using to track your time?
That wasn't time tracking. That was just the number of hours in a year. :) I was pretty bad and really worried about things almost non-stop. So it was a bit of an exaggeration--but not much.