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How we bootstrapped our SaaS to $1M ARR
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Re: How we bootstrapped our SaaS to $1M ARR
#32Awesome story and congratulations! You recommended Rob Walling’s book, Start Small, Stay Small, but what else can I read? And where do “indie hackers” like you hang out on the internet, so that i can learn more about how to do this myself? Any other resources worth sharing?
MicroConf Connect is an awesome bootstrappery community: https://microconf.com/connect
Re: How we bootstrapped our SaaS to $1M ARR
#33Awesome story and congratulations! You recommended Rob Walling’s book, Start Small, Stay Small, but what else can I read? And where do “indie hackers” like you hang out on the internet, so that i can learn more about how to do this myself? Any other resources worth sharing?
Community:- Twitter
- IndieHackers (haven't been here in a wild but I definitely recommend the funders interview)
- Microconf
Book:
- From Zero to Sold (Arvid Kahl)
- Hello Startup (Yevgeniy Brikman)
I hope it helps :)
Re: How we bootstrapped our SaaS to $1M ARR
#34Congratulations! Q: Does ScrapingBee differ to Browserless.io? Or do they do the same thing? I've been out of the scraping scene for years (BeautifulSoup was new when I was doing it).
We close but different.
Browserless allows have a fleet of Chrome in the cloud that you can use to run some browsing scenario.
ScrapingBee is an API allowing to get the HTML of webpages by optionally rendering them inside a real browser, but also managing proxies, data extraction and JS scenario.
Let's say we're cousins ;)
Re: How we bootstrapped our SaaS to $1M ARR
#35Congratulations! But maybe "bootstrapped" is not a 100% correct. > MAY 2020 - Joining Tinyseed > And this is precisely why we never decided to raise money. However, a few years ago, [...] An accelerator designed precisely to help people grow their business [...] The money and the support we got from the program helped us grow ScrapingBee into what it is now
Co-founder here, I was waiting for this comment to be honest. So in essence, if you consider that bootstrapping is building a business without external funding, you're correct. But to me, bootstrapping VS "VC road" is much more nuanced than this. Going the VC road forces you to have crazy growth and raise more round because the VC model only works if they fund unicorn 1 time out of 100(0). TinySeed works even if they…
Nice little meta discussion we have here...
Once again another thread where no one seems to agree on what constitutes venture capital and what a startup is.
By definition - you took a minority investment. Bootstrapping, colloquially, means you have not funded your company with any equity or capital that could be converted to equity.
btw - you got attention by saying you were bootstrapped and since this is just marketing material then kudos to you for the good marketing.
Re: How we bootstrapped our SaaS to $1M ARR
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
bootstrap = on your own. That's it. You had some seed funding.
Founder of another TonySeed startup. On your own can mean many things. I also burnt through my personal savings for the first year. So. On your own is just “VC’ed yourself” Taking money from TinySeed is very different than taking money from VC.
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Re: How we bootstrapped our SaaS to $1M ARR
#37Congratulations! But maybe "bootstrapped" is not a 100% correct. > MAY 2020 - Joining Tinyseed > And this is precisely why we never decided to raise money. However, a few years ago, [...] An accelerator designed precisely to help people grow their business [...] The money and the support we got from the program helped us grow ScrapingBee into what it is now
Co-founder here, I was waiting for this comment to be honest. So in essence, if you consider that bootstrapping is building a business without external funding, you're correct. But to me, bootstrapping VS "VC road" is much more nuanced than this. Going the VC road forces you to have crazy growth and raise more round because the VC model only works if they fund unicorn 1 time out of 100(0). TinySeed works even if they…
The common use for "bootstrapping" is using personal capital and then funding the business with its own proceeds.
If you'd say "How we grew our business without traditional VCs" that'd be an excellent title. What you describe in your comment here sounds like an interesting alternative approach.
But the way it's introduced looks like an article about how a 25 year old bought their own house, and step 5 is "my parents took the mortgage and I pay them rent."
Re: How we bootstrapped our SaaS to $1M ARR
#38Congratulations! But maybe "bootstrapped" is not a 100% correct. > MAY 2020 - Joining Tinyseed > And this is precisely why we never decided to raise money. However, a few years ago, [...] An accelerator designed precisely to help people grow their business [...] The money and the support we got from the program helped us grow ScrapingBee into what it is now
Co-founder here, I was waiting for this comment to be honest. So in essence, if you consider that bootstrapping is building a business without external funding, you're correct. But to me, bootstrapping VS "VC road" is much more nuanced than this. Going the VC road forces you to have crazy growth and raise more round because the VC model only works if they fund unicorn 1 time out of 100(0). TinySeed works even if they…
@Daolf - congrats on the building, definitely NOT easy to do.
What growth metrics did Tiny look at? Did the investment come at a time when the business was needing to "survive, sustain, or grow"? [every business has all of those phases]
Re: How we bootstrapped our SaaS to $1M ARR
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
Founder of another TonySeed startup. On your own can mean many things. I also burnt through my personal savings for the first year. So. On your own is just “VC’ed yourself” Taking money from TinySeed is very different than taking money from VC.
> So. On your own is just “VC’ed yourself” Precisely. If TinySeed has provided funds, it's no longer "VC'ed yourself", it's "VC'ed yourself + tiny seed from TinySeed". > Taking money from TinySeed is very different than taking money from VC. No one is arguing that TinySeed is just like any other VC. But instead that by accepting VC, you could no longer claim the business to be bootstrapped.
So if I start with $1M of my own money, is it bootstrapped?
If family (with fuzzy conditions) ponied up $250k, is it bootstrapped?
Re: How we bootstrapped our SaaS to $1M ARR
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
Founder of another TonySeed startup. On your own can mean many things. I also burnt through my personal savings for the first year. So. On your own is just “VC’ed yourself” Taking money from TinySeed is very different than taking money from VC.
"VC'd yourself" is the definition of bootstrapping. You either take money from someone else or you bootstrap it yourself.
It's kind of disingenuous to try to make this same comparison across different people.
What if you borrow money from family in order to start your business? Are you no longer "bootstrapping"?
What is Bezos decides he's bored, and wants to start something new. Really looking forward to seeing the "most successful bootstrapper of 2030" be Jeff Bezos with his self-funded $5B "startup".