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We bootstrapped to $11M in ARR

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Re: We bootstrapped to $11M in ARR

#181

Post by yibg »

mplewis wrote: post #177
yibg wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you propose? Don't hire from cheap places or pay them the same rate as expensive places? If companies pays the same as expensive places, why would they hire from cheaper places?

Because paying people enough money to thrive, not just survive, is the right thing to do.

That certainly would be great, but is it realistic?

Manufacturing for example, is heavily outsourced to cheaper locations. We can certainly have all the tshirts we buy in the US made in the US. Hire locally, create jobs, pay a thriving wage etc.

Then the tshirts will cost more. You might be ok with that, but will the rest of the population? Or will they opt to buy the $10 tshirts made in China? Do we impose heavy duties on anything imported, so the domestic products are price competitive? What about export markets? Will Europe buy our $50 tshirts over the $10 Chinese made tshirts?

Paying local workers a thriving wage would be great, and we certainly do it for many sectors (tech for example). I just don't know if it's workable for a lot of things.

Re: We bootstrapped to $11M in ARR

#182

Post by yibg »

cambalache wrote: post #176
yibg wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you propose? Don't hire from cheap places or pay them the same rate as expensive places? If companies pays the same as expensive places, why would they hire from cheaper places?

Write all these down: - Pay your local workers livable wages and dont fuck the local population. Where are most of the customers located? - If you want to hire foreign workers pay them the same or a substantial fraction of your local workers. If they are good their nationality should not matter. - Hire and pay directly not through intermediates, dont wash your hands off from all the regulations you need to comply wit…

How much is a substantial fraction and who determines that? Is it a simple fraction or does it depend on the market and competitive landscape? Is it something governments should regulate or should consumers vote with their wallets?

Companies should adhere to regulations though, no arguments there.

Re: We bootstrapped to $11M in ARR

#183

Post by wpietri »

radihuq wrote: post #158
wpietri wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The first one is only true for a solo founder. Given that they said "we", the company's money is still the company's money. Also, it's not clear to me that avoiding accountability is really a plus for a startup. Basically the first thing I did when I was exploring a solo founder/bootstrapped thing was to hire a startup-focused coach to serve as an accountability partner.

A startup-focused coach sounds incredibly valuable. How did you find your coach?

This was somebody I know through the Lean Startup movement, Sean Murphy: https://www.skmurphy.com/

He's brilliant, and he started Bootstrappers Breakfast, so he's very comfortable with bootstrapping and solo founders. He asked so many good questions.

I also recommend Tristan Kromer: http://www.tristankromer.com/

He's also great, and is more focused on larger startups and intrapreneurs.

Re: We bootstrapped to $11M in ARR

#184

Post by 908B64B197 »

cambalache wrote: post #170
tfang17 wrote: post #140

Seems to be a lot of questions about how bootstrapped startups handle customer support. I'm the cofounder of Eureka Surveys. We're bootstrapped, profitable, and just crossed 1M+ users. We've had an amazing experience hiring customer support in the Philippines. I have a thread about it on Twitter: https://twitter.com/t0mstah/status/1356296043009253382 The tl;dr is that you can hire cheap ($3.50/hr), high quality virtu…

- Cheap, high-quality, free-from-exploitation. Pick 2. Spare me the "Life is cheaper in the 3-world non-sense"

If they want to make more, why not simply charge more and let the market decide what's the fair value?

Re: We bootstrapped to $11M in ARR

#185

Post by tfang17 »

jiux wrote: post #180
tfang17 wrote: post #140

Seems to be a lot of questions about how bootstrapped startups handle customer support. I'm the cofounder of Eureka Surveys. We're bootstrapped, profitable, and just crossed 1M+ users. We've had an amazing experience hiring customer support in the Philippines. I have a thread about it on Twitter: https://twitter.com/t0mstah/status/1356296043009253382 The tl;dr is that you can hire cheap ($3.50/hr), high quality virtu…

I’ve been to the Philippines a couple times (out of my own curiosity; origin = USA), and let me tell you, customer service there is HUGE. From an American perspective, a couple key points to know are 1. Filipinos are among the nicest people in the world, cultural-wise, and 2. English is taught starting in most elementary schools there. But wait, there’s more! From the Filipino perspective, you get to help enable a ne…

100% agree, it's a win-win for everyone!

Filipino culture is also very friendly and most VAs speak almost fluent English.

Re: We bootstrapped to $11M in ARR

#186

Post by wuschel »

bootstrapper101 wrote: post #58
wuschel wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi, no worries, we all communicate with text here... misunderstandings happen regularly with a fraction users you interact with. Congratulations on your success! Here are some questions: Q1. What was the prerequisite for your success (product/service, team, market)? Q2 What technology space are you in? (Digital/brand vs high-tech)? Q3 What weré your difficultis when iterating over your product concepts, and what was…

I don't think that I can guarantee success. There was some angle of luck involved. However over time, because I am getting faster, I am getting more shots at the game. Earlier I could play one game over 2 years and make many mistake (which now look obvious to me) along the way. Now I can play multiple games every year. So that helps you build your own luck to some extent. > Q1. What was the prerequisite for your succ…

Thank you for taking the time to reply! :)

Re: We bootstrapped to $11M in ARR

#187

Post by AussieWog93 »

bootstrapper101 wrote: post #141
AussieWog93 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've seen people take the advice of "build something that could be useful to someone" the wrong way so many times. That "someone" shouldn't be an abstract, hypothetical customer but a group of people that contains someone you intimately know, such as a close friend, partner or yourself. I think "build something that would be useful to someone that you personally know, and many others like them" is a much more concret…

This is excellent advice. You should know and understand who your customer are. Otherwise you won't even know what to build. Or you will build the wrong product and won't get any feedback. Congrats on your journey and best of luck for the future!

Thanks mate, really appreciate the encouragement from someone who's made it.

Re: We bootstrapped to $11M in ARR

#188

Post by cambalache »

yibg wrote: post #182
cambalache wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Write all these down: - Pay your local workers livable wages and dont fuck the local population. Where are most of the customers located? - If you want to hire foreign workers pay them the same or a substantial fraction of your local workers. If they are good their nationality should not matter. - Hire and pay directly not through intermediates, dont wash your hands off from all the regulations you need to comply wit…

How much is a substantial fraction and who determines that? Is it a simple fraction or does it depend on the market and competitive landscape? Is it something governments should regulate or should consumers vote with their wallets? Companies should adhere to regulations though, no arguments there.

> How much is a substantial fraction and who determines that

I determine that and I say +80% , you dont get weasel out of this with useless semantic distinctions.

> Is it a simple fraction

As oppose to a "complex" one?

> Is it something governments should regulate or should consumers vote with their wallets?

The company owners should be ethical enough to pay that.

Do you use this kind of sophistry to justify your compensation or what you charge for your product or service? I highly suspect that is not the case. Easy peasy to play Aristotle when it is about poor working-people living money.

Re: We bootstrapped to $11M in ARR

#189

Post by tfang17 »

cambalache wrote: post #170
tfang17 wrote: post #140

Seems to be a lot of questions about how bootstrapped startups handle customer support. I'm the cofounder of Eureka Surveys. We're bootstrapped, profitable, and just crossed 1M+ users. We've had an amazing experience hiring customer support in the Philippines. I have a thread about it on Twitter: https://twitter.com/t0mstah/status/1356296043009253382 The tl;dr is that you can hire cheap ($3.50/hr), high quality virtu…

- Cheap, high-quality, free-from-exploitation. Pick 2. Spare me the "Life is cheaper in the 3-world non-sense"

We do try and pay above market rate and provide benefits to our VAs. In general, our philosophy is to treat them like long-term employees, rather than as short-term contractors.

We have had 0% attrition rate and have been told by our VAs that working for us has been the best job they've ever had!

Re: We bootstrapped to $11M in ARR

#190

Post by everybodyknows »

bootstrapper101 wrote: post #38
practicalpants wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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"?

My other account (bootstrapper101) got throttled. Maybe @dang can help merge this tomorrow. I could maybe spend 5000 words and still not be able to say all I want to say about this. The ideas were all over the place: Social, Enterprise, Consumer, Saas. I learnt over time that once you have failed so many times, you start avoiding obvious mistakes. Mistakes like polishing your app before launch, wasting time on PR, bu…

Could you tell us a bit about compensation/ownership for your other two on staff?
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