How we bootstrapped our SaaS to $1M ARR • Hacker News Board

Re: How we bootstrapped our SaaS to $1M ARR

#151

Post by AlchemistCamp » Sat, Jan 22, 2022, 4:36 AM UTC

reitzensteinm wrote: post #134

daolf wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This blew way out of proportion. Misleading people was never the intent. We just wanted to share our story and give a little more "human" touch to our about-us page by sharing the journey. Title was amended. Have a good week-end HN!

For what it's worth, I think people are nit picking rather than crying foul. It's a great story, thanks for sharing it!

I hadn't commented on this thread previously, but I did flag it due to the title. It just wasn't honest.

Selling a double digit % of the company to investors and then calling it bootstrapped while promoting it here is hard to defend.

Re: How we bootstrapped our SaaS to $1M ARR

#152

Post by ammar_x » Sat, Jan 22, 2022, 8:32 AM UTC

This is an inspiring story, thanks for sharing.

Re: How we bootstrapped our SaaS to $1M ARR

#153

Post by daolf » Sat, Jan 22, 2022, 1:01 PM UTC

frays wrote: post #148

Congratulations. I look forward to watching where ScrapingBee will be in another few years. This is certainly a gap in the market which you can fill. This new look for your website is also great. What front end framework + back end stack are you using?

Thanks a lot for the kind words.

Back: Python + Postgres + Flask + redis

Front: JS vanilla + a bit of Svelte

Re: How we bootstrapped our SaaS to $1M ARR

#154

Post by c0balt » Sat, Jan 22, 2022, 1:19 PM UTC

twox2 wrote: post #79

manmanic wrote: post #76

This is almost cool, unfortunately the product itself (a network of bots to allow websites to be scraped when they obviously don't want to be) seems a little shifty. For example, put these three exhibits together: Exhibit 1: The ScrapingBee terms and conditions state "We assume that you use the Website Platform and Services legally and ethically and that you have obtained permission, if necessary, to use it on the ta…

It's good that there are businesses like this testing the legality of scraping. The notion that scraping should be illegal is absurd IMO.

Forbidding scrapping should be allowed and respected, especially scrapping by businesses.

Scraping by itself shouldn't be illegal per se but not respecting policies and using glorifed bot nets won't help anyone. Scraping costs the hosting person/ company money and/ or resources. For example, the advertised use case of scrapping a job board to create an aggregator for job postings is maybe good from the point of someone searching for a job but a hefty punch to the hosted of the job board that has potentially hefty costs (running the board, moderating, ...) without any gain.

Scrapbee is not helping anyone but themselves and is only challenging the legality of commercial botnetes IMO.

Edit: changed 'public botnet' to 'commercial botnet' in the last sentence

Re: How we bootstrapped our SaaS to $1M ARR

#155

Post by codegeek » Sat, Jan 22, 2022, 3:29 PM UTC

jjeaff wrote: post #150

codegeek wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As another bootstrapped founder, I disagree with you. "Our standard terms are for 10-12% equity." The moment you give equity in exchange for money no matter whether its tinyseed or whatever, you are not bootstrapping. Your financial risk is lower because you don't have to pay this money back if your company fails. That is not called bootstrapping. I bootstrapped with my own money AND some smaller loans which I am ful…

I think some people would not consider it bootstrapped if you have any outside loans. Usually bootstrapped means you funded the growth of the business with it's own revenue only. While small loans wouldn't matter much, to me, if someone gets a small million dollar loan from their daddy to start the business, it's not bootstrapped.

Yes million dollars from daddy is not a real loan so i would call that free money or an investment which can be lost without conseiqences. A real loan from a bank with personal guarantee on one he other hand is very different.

Re: How we bootstrapped our SaaS to $1M ARR

#156

Post by daolf » Sun, Jan 23, 2022, 11:01 AM UTC

ammar_x wrote: post #152

This is an inspiring story, thanks for sharing.

Thank you!

Re: How we bootstrapped our SaaS to $1M ARR

#157

Post by twox2 » Mon, Jan 24, 2022, 3:02 PM UTC

c0balt wrote: post #154

twox2 wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's good that there are businesses like this testing the legality of scraping. The notion that scraping should be illegal is absurd IMO.

Forbidding scrapping should be allowed and respected, especially scrapping by businesses. Scraping by itself shouldn't be illegal per se but not respecting policies and using glorifed bot nets won't help anyone. Scraping costs the hosting person/ company money and/ or resources. For example, the advertised use case of scrapping a job board to create an aggregator for job postings is maybe good from the point of someo…

It's a tug of war between "acceptable behavior" and "bad behavior", but in the interest of an open internet, this cat and mouse needs to exist. Service providers negatively impacted by scraping can price in their mitigations.

Re: How we bootstrapped our SaaS to $1M ARR

#158

Post by jay377 » Mon, Jan 31, 2022, 1:26 PM UTC

Hi, would you say most of your clients come from organic currently? Can you give an idea of your customer source splits, organic, paid ads etc? Im guessing the content marketing and organic traffic currently drives the majority of your revenue? thanks

Re: How we bootstrapped our SaaS to $1M ARR

#159

Post by chana_masala » Thu, Feb 03, 2022, 5:33 PM UTC

cj wrote: post #144

threeseed wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you raise $100k from an angel then you were a bootstrapped company and now you aren't. No spectrum. No complications. No twisting of words. Very simple.

I fail to see the benefit of subscribing to a viewpoint that is so black and white, and why definition that allows for no exception is necessary. If we are taking things to the extreme, I could argue that Visa/Mastercard is your investor considering you maxed out your credit cards, you’re spending someone else’s money by doing that. And just like convertible notes or debt financing, you’ll have to pay it back. Conver…

> I fail to see the benefit of subscribing to a viewpoint that is so black and white, and why definition that allows for no exception is necessary.

Maybe look at it in a different situation. Imagine someone punched you in the face and when you confront them about it they saying that you're holding to silly semantics about what it means or does not mean to get punched in the face.