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My eighth year as a bootstrapped founder

mtlynch.io

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Re: My eighth year as a bootstrapped founder

#3

Post by verelo »

mtlynch wrote: post #2

Author here. Happy to answer any questions or take feedback about this post.

I'd love to learn more about your process of the sale. And in your graphs, is that attributed to profit/revenue in 2024?

I'm on a super similar journey. Started in 2022, did about 400k in revenue in 2025 at 79% margin, we'll se how this year goes. Theres a world where i'd love to add a lot of scale, but that'll rely on some experiments (underway) panning out. It's 'failure' in most peoples books but 2x'ing would be great too?!

How did you find a buyer? How did you come to a sale price? Why didn't you keep going?

Re: My eighth year as a bootstrapped founder

#4

Post by Flux159 »

mtlynch wrote: post #2

Author here. Happy to answer any questions or take feedback about this post.

I'm currently a solo bootstrapped founder, have done short stints in the past - 1 year in 2022, then became cofounder of a funded startup for a year. Now doing it again.

Question is how you stay motivated to keep at it - looks like it took about 4 years before you made similar to your Google salary, did family pressure or external pressure ever impact you? Or is it mainly just keep your eyes on the longer term goal?

I'm also quite lucky that I was aiming for lean-FIRE before I left Facebook, so I have the luxury of being able to keep at it, but sometimes it is demotivating seeing peers / others.

Re: My eighth year as a bootstrapped founder

#5

Post by mtlynch »

verelo wrote: post #3
mtlynch wrote: post #2

Author here. Happy to answer any questions or take feedback about this post.

I'd love to learn more about your process of the sale. And in your graphs, is that attributed to profit/revenue in 2024? I'm on a super similar journey. Started in 2022, did about 400k in revenue in 2025 at 79% margin, we'll se how this year goes. Theres a world where i'd love to add a lot of scale, but that'll rely on some experiments (underway) panning out. It's 'failure' in most peoples books but 2x'ing would be g…

> I'm on a super similar journey. Started in 2022, did about 400k in revenue in 2025 at 79% margin, we'll se how this year goes. Theres a world where i'd love to add a lot of scale, but that'll rely on some experiments (underway) panning out. It's 'failure' in most peoples books but 2x'ing would be great too?!

Nice, congrats!

Yeah, I think depending on what bubble you're in, bootstrapping to 400k and 2x'ing every few years is either failure or amazing. The VC/hypergrowth path doesn't appeal to me, so I think something that gives you $100k+/yr in profit is a huge success.

> I'd love to learn more about your process of the sale.

Sure, I wrote a couple of posts with the details.[0, 1]

[0] https://mtlynch.io/i-sold-tinypilot/

[1] https://mtlynch.io/lessons-from-my-first-exit/

Re: My eighth year as a bootstrapped founder

#8

Post by mtlynch »

Flux159 wrote: post #4
mtlynch wrote: post #2

Author here. Happy to answer any questions or take feedback about this post.

I'm currently a solo bootstrapped founder, have done short stints in the past - 1 year in 2022, then became cofounder of a funded startup for a year. Now doing it again. Question is how you stay motivated to keep at it - looks like it took about 4 years before you made similar to your Google salary, did family pressure or external pressure ever impact you? Or is it mainly just keep your eyes on the longer term goal?…

> Question is how you stay motivated to keep at it - looks like it took about 4 years before you made similar to your Google salary, did family pressure or external pressure ever impact you? Or is it mainly just keep your eyes on the longer term goal?

I found it helpful to go in with low expectations.

I was listening to a lot of podcasts about bootstrapping while I was still at Google in 2017-2018, and even the big success stories usually had 5+ years of failing or succeeding only marginally. So, I went in with the expectation that I'd probably fail for the first 5 years, and so there wasn't that feeling of disappointment from not earning much the first few years.

I also had a lot of lucky conditions that made it easy to take the risk at the time, including no family to support, lots of savings, low expenses.

> I'm also quite lucky that I was aiming for lean-FIRE before I left Facebook, so I have the luxury of being able to keep at it, but sometimes it is demotivating seeing peers / others.

Yeah, honestly I do sometimes think, "Wow, if I'd stayed at Google and kept getting that comp (which was about 50% equity IIRC), that would be a lot of money." But I also am very pleased with my life now, and I know I wouldn't have enjoyed my job nearly as much for the last 8 years had I stayed an employee. And that's a huge amount of my life to not do what I'd like to do.

Re: My eighth year as a bootstrapped founder

#9

Post by scalemaxx »

mtlynch wrote: post #2

Author here. Happy to answer any questions or take feedback about this post.

I'm curious about your book journey. Sounds like having a big audience and pre-existing list really helps! How did you go about building that audience and list, and what helped the most to doing that? Which lists / audience converted the most for your book offer, and how did you promote or otherwise let folks know about your book? What was the compelling ask to pre-order a book? And, how do you plan to publish the book? Lots of book questions

Re: My eighth year as a bootstrapped founder

#10

Post by scalemaxx »

mtlynch wrote: post #5
verelo wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd love to learn more about your process of the sale. And in your graphs, is that attributed to profit/revenue in 2024? I'm on a super similar journey. Started in 2022, did about 400k in revenue in 2025 at 79% margin, we'll se how this year goes. Theres a world where i'd love to add a lot of scale, but that'll rely on some experiments (underway) panning out. It's 'failure' in most peoples books but 2x'ing would be g…

> I'm on a super similar journey. Started in 2022, did about 400k in revenue in 2025 at 79% margin, we'll se how this year goes. Theres a world where i'd love to add a lot of scale, but that'll rely on some experiments (underway) panning out. It's 'failure' in most peoples books but 2x'ing would be great too?! Nice, congrats! Yeah, I think depending on what bubble you're in, bootstrapping to 400k and 2x'ing every few…

Do you do podcast interviews? Would love to dig into the no-VC/hypergrowth path as that's what I'm all about.
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