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We bootstrapped to $11M in ARR

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Re: We bootstrapped to $11M in ARR

#11

Post by 0xfaded »

jampa wrote: post #3

Nice writeup! Speaking as someone that tried to be a founder from Brazil: I imagine that making it on Silicon Valley must be hard task on itself but making in an underdeveloped country makes odds stacked against you. We compete with companies founded with people that have access to clients with way more purchasing power and better supply pipeline. I'm a bit curious on how the team got overcame this issues, and would…

> We compete with companies founded with people that have access to clients with way more purchasing power and better supply pipeline.

Your wording flipped a bit in my head. That exact wording could be said of Europe. There's a whole show and dance to make it seem like it's not, but when everything is about government grants and consortiums, it is.

Re: We bootstrapped to $11M in ARR

#12

Post by andi999 »

bootstrapper101 wrote: post #7
eric4smith wrote: post #2

The vast majority of businesses.... 1. Are outside the valley 2. Started with minimal or no funding 3. Hire a ton of employees overall 4. Give their founders comfortable lives. 5. Do their thing very quietly without anyone really knowing. 6. You've never heard about.

I run one of these companies. USD 50M+ ARR, USD 20M+ profit. 3 people company. Could grow 10x if we want to. But we are enjoying staying low and enjoying our family lives. Excellent article by the Canary guys. They seem like really honest people. We didn't raise any money. Only focus was how to do faster iterations. By the time 25 of my ideas didn't succeed, every iteration became very fast. Idea to launch in 3 month…

This is fascinating. Is your product b2b? How fast did you discard the 25 ideas? It sounde like you needed 3 month at least, so 8 years? What did you live on during that time? So in short:please tell me more

Re: We bootstrapped to $11M in ARR

#13

Post by breck »

bootstrapper101 wrote: post #7
eric4smith wrote: post #2

The vast majority of businesses.... 1. Are outside the valley 2. Started with minimal or no funding 3. Hire a ton of employees overall 4. Give their founders comfortable lives. 5. Do their thing very quietly without anyone really knowing. 6. You've never heard about.

I run one of these companies. USD 50M+ ARR, USD 20M+ profit. 3 people company. Could grow 10x if we want to. But we are enjoying staying low and enjoying our family lives. Excellent article by the Canary guys. They seem like really honest people. We didn't raise any money. Only focus was how to do faster iterations. By the time 25 of my ideas didn't succeed, every iteration became very fast. Idea to launch in 3 month…

Are there any small public companies (<50 employees) you admire?

Re: We bootstrapped to $11M in ARR

#14

Post by warent »

bootstrapper101 wrote: post #7
eric4smith wrote: post #2

The vast majority of businesses.... 1. Are outside the valley 2. Started with minimal or no funding 3. Hire a ton of employees overall 4. Give their founders comfortable lives. 5. Do their thing very quietly without anyone really knowing. 6. You've never heard about.

I run one of these companies. USD 50M+ ARR, USD 20M+ profit. 3 people company. Could grow 10x if we want to. But we are enjoying staying low and enjoying our family lives. Excellent article by the Canary guys. They seem like really honest people. We didn't raise any money. Only focus was how to do faster iterations. By the time 25 of my ideas didn't succeed, every iteration became very fast. Idea to launch in 3 month…

Am I the only one reading a significant amount of ego and humblebrag from this post? It's pretty off-putting and distracting from where there could be value.

Re: We bootstrapped to $11M in ARR

#15

Post by bootstrapper101 »

warent wrote: post #14
bootstrapper101 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I run one of these companies. USD 50M+ ARR, USD 20M+ profit. 3 people company. Could grow 10x if we want to. But we are enjoying staying low and enjoying our family lives. Excellent article by the Canary guys. They seem like really honest people. We didn't raise any money. Only focus was how to do faster iterations. By the time 25 of my ideas didn't succeed, every iteration became very fast. Idea to launch in 3 month…

Am I the only one reading a significant amount of ego and humblebrag from this post? It's pretty off-putting and distracting from where there could be value.

I am really sorry it came that way. It's been a long day.

Thought this was a good opportunity to share my learnings and answer any questions. If there is any way I could help answer any question, I would love to!

Re: We bootstrapped to $11M in ARR

#16

Post by ZephyrBlu »

divbzero wrote: post #4
eric4smith wrote: post #2

The vast majority of businesses.... 1. Are outside the valley 2. Started with minimal or no funding 3. Hire a ton of employees overall 4. Give their founders comfortable lives. 5. Do their thing very quietly without anyone really knowing. 6. You've never heard about.

I’d love to hear more of these stories, but suspect 5. Do their thing very quietly is in the spirit of many of these businesses.

I was looking for a different example from @patio11, but this one will have to do: https://twitter.com/patio11/status/701765026286206976

Re: We bootstrapped to $11M in ARR

#17

Post by bootstrapper101 »

andi999 wrote: post #12
bootstrapper101 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I run one of these companies. USD 50M+ ARR, USD 20M+ profit. 3 people company. Could grow 10x if we want to. But we are enjoying staying low and enjoying our family lives. Excellent article by the Canary guys. They seem like really honest people. We didn't raise any money. Only focus was how to do faster iterations. By the time 25 of my ideas didn't succeed, every iteration became very fast. Idea to launch in 3 month…

This is fascinating. Is your product b2b? How fast did you discard the 25 ideas? It sounde like you needed 3 month at least, so 8 years? What did you live on during that time? So in short:please tell me more

It's a consumer product. It is very draining. In today's world consumer don't want to pay for anything, unless they really want the product and they don't have a way to get it otherwise.

Many users would use the product and then file chargebacks. Many users will go to any extend to get out of paying coming up with either sad stories, lies or threats. When it's a low cost, high volume product (5m+ paying customers over time) - you deal with too many of these and sometimes it's very demoralizing.

I used to work for someone else in Saas and this wasn't such a big issue there. Next thing I do won't be in consumer.

Some ideas where tried end to end in a week, some were run for 2 years. Did a lot of mistakes along the way.

Re: We bootstrapped to $11M in ARR

#18

Post by eric4smith »

spullara wrote: post #8
flukus wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least for software, the vast majority are in some sort of niche you've either never heard of or thought about. Software for managing operating theater procedures, software for managing doctors/dentists, software for managing money exchanges, software for managing legal conveyancing, software for managing schools, etc. Those are examples from places that I've worked that were purely software shops, add to that just…

Those are absolutely terrible companies for software developers to work for though. I have several family members that work for them. If you want average pay and the owners to take all the profits, go for it. Otherwise, work for FAANG, a great startup or a finance company (hedge fund or investment bank).

Most companies are average to above average pay. FAANG's are an aberration, not the norm.

Re: We bootstrapped to $11M in ARR

#19

Post by practicalpants »

bootstrapper101 wrote: post #7
eric4smith wrote: post #2

The vast majority of businesses.... 1. Are outside the valley 2. Started with minimal or no funding 3. Hire a ton of employees overall 4. Give their founders comfortable lives. 5. Do their thing very quietly without anyone really knowing. 6. You've never heard about.

I run one of these companies. USD 50M+ ARR, USD 20M+ profit. 3 people company. Could grow 10x if we want to. But we are enjoying staying low and enjoying our family lives. Excellent article by the Canary guys. They seem like really honest people. We didn't raise any money. Only focus was how to do faster iterations. By the time 25 of my ideas didn't succeed, every iteration became very fast. Idea to launch in 3 month…

Process question: What specifically would you do to get early customers or to market the mvp? How did this change over the 25 attempts?

What was your criteria for "this one has failed let's do another one"?

Re: We bootstrapped to $11M in ARR

#20

Post by melomal »

eric4smith wrote: post #2

The vast majority of businesses.... 1. Are outside the valley 2. Started with minimal or no funding 3. Hire a ton of employees overall 4. Give their founders comfortable lives. 5. Do their thing very quietly without anyone really knowing. 6. You've never heard about.

>5. Do their thing very quietly without anyone really knowing.

6. You've never heard about.

I love going to industrial estates and checking out what is going on in there for this exact reason. CNC machine, 3D printing, endless engineering all of which will never be appreciated or create a fan boy cult but they will keep many, many other businesses operational and growing.

These places actually build things too, real tangible things that have requirements and so forth.

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