Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

My sixth year as a bootstrapped founder

mtlynch.io

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 339 posts

Re: My sixth year as a bootstrapped founder

#61

Post by OJFord »

tgtweak wrote: post #51

I think people (and the founder) are focusing on yearly profits as their remuneration and comparing it to a salary... but the reality is you're creating a company that should be valued (and eventually sell) for 7-15X Earnings - and you really should be looking at that increase in value vs your increase in profits. In reality your net worth went up by over $1.5 million in the last year, in addition to earning 236k - t…

Advertise features you don't have and disappoint/infuriate those would-be users? Or are you suggesting a slightly less annoying 'coming soon' type landing page, where if it doesn't get enough traffic 'soon' just never comes?

Re: My sixth year as a bootstrapped founder

#62

Post by boplicity »

abfan1127 wrote: post #10
BadHumans wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

in what sense is it getting worse? While there may be local minima, I'd argue that its the best its ever been. News has always been pessimistic because negative emotions are easier to trigger to drive attention which pays the bills.

We've already passed the 1.5 Degree Celsius limit on global warming. That alone has catastrophic consequences.

Yet, the production of fossil fuels remains near record levels, and producers are aiming to scale up, as opposed to scale down. Political discourse on this topic often amounts to "but my expenses are already too high."

For many people, this is still an abstract and slow moving problem. Yet, it is a very real problem with dire consequences. (That are somehow easy to ignore!)

Is the world getting worse?

In some ways, it's getting better.

Yet, we seem doomed to cause so much destruction. It's gonna be bad. Very bad. But not right away (for many of us).

https://www.sei.org/publications/production-gap-report-2023/

https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2024/02/0...

Re: My sixth year as a bootstrapped founder

#63

Post by ein0p »

tgtweak wrote: post #55
ein0p wrote: post #49

FYI: You can’t “not draw a salary” and get that profit out of the company. IRS mandates that you pay yourself a reasonable amount, and pay (eye watering amounts of) taxes on that amount. You can’t circumvent any of that by just taking everything as distributions.

I don't think there were any insinuations that that was after-tax income in his personal bank account - just that the company earned that much in the previous year and it could be paid out (dividends or otherwise) after much in the way a gross salary would be.

For single person LLC (as the OP said) it doesn’t make any difference - they’re paying all taxes on the entire amount and then just deducting business expenses. IOW their business account does not require any special treatment. For corps (including S corp) there’s often this temptation for the founders to pay themselves the bare minimum and skirt some of the taxes (social security for example). I was pointing out that this is a good way to draw unwanted attention.

Re: My sixth year as a bootstrapped founder

#64

Post by koonsolo »

tgtweak wrote: post #51

I think people (and the founder) are focusing on yearly profits as their remuneration and comparing it to a salary... but the reality is you're creating a company that should be valued (and eventually sell) for 7-15X Earnings - and you really should be looking at that increase in value vs your increase in profits. In reality your net worth went up by over $1.5 million in the last year, in addition to earning 236k - t…

Sure, but the valuation doesn't buy you any food. In the end you need cashflow.

Re: My sixth year as a bootstrapped founder

#65

Post by uoaei »

WrongAssumption wrote: post #21
spencerflem wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whether the world as a whole is getting worse is debatable, but I think it's very clear that tech companies are

Is it clear? Microsoft of old? IBM of old? AT&T of old? Juggernauts with abusive monopoly power that tech companies today could only dream of.

I'm getting visions of that New Yorker cartoon about shareholder value but it's just a techie in Allbirds saying "is it really worse, tho?"

Re: My sixth year as a bootstrapped founder

#66

Post by mym1990 »

DanHulton wrote: post #57
abfan1127 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

in what sense is it getting worse? While there may be local minima, I'd argue that its the best its ever been. News has always been pessimistic because negative emotions are easier to trigger to drive attention which pays the bills.

A lot of things are getting superficially better (personal computing tech has never been more incredible), but there's a lot scary shit that is encroaching on the daily without sufficient plans in place to really deal with. Off the top of my head: - Global warming and how we don't seem to have any plans to a path to hit any of the less-than-apocalyptic warming targets, - Corporate regulatory capture, with more and mo…

Would you agree that whatever you are currently working on, either at Nodewood or evisort, is contributing to this superficial betterment of the world? Not to be dense but you are talking about empathy for people who are at the bottom of the human totem pole while posting on a tech forum while working on products that most likely don't contribute anything to actually making the world a better place. If you really cared, you would give up almost everything to give up what you have to go help those in need...but I guess a post on HN will do as well.

Re: My sixth year as a bootstrapped founder

#67

Post by boarnoah »

OJFord wrote: post #61
tgtweak wrote: post #51

I think people (and the founder) are focusing on yearly profits as their remuneration and comparing it to a salary... but the reality is you're creating a company that should be valued (and eventually sell) for 7-15X Earnings - and you really should be looking at that increase in value vs your increase in profits. In reality your net worth went up by over $1.5 million in the last year, in addition to earning 236k - t…

Advertise features you don't have and disappoint/infuriate those would-be users? Or are you suggesting a slightly less annoying 'coming soon' type landing page, where if it doesn't get enough traffic 'soon' just never comes?

Wonder about this myself, have noticed with folks like Rob Walling and presumably others. They all seem to suggest testing market fit by essentially doing this for features, and in some cases soft launching websites prior to having anything ready at all!

Seems risky if you are dipping your toes into something you do not have a deep understanding of the product market for.

Anecdotally I've seen with video games (the communities tends to be very vocal and somewhat centralized?), where inexperienced developers promise things that are realistically way beyond the capabilities, or promise things too early based on their honeymoon period for rough implementations. Then suffer on the other end when they fail to meet roadmaps or delivery of features at all.

It seems like an even worse situation with serious software with asks for larger amounts of money? Then again maybe this strategy can get away with it, because there is that lack of cohesive communities with some degree of group think who would get up in arms over bad promises?

Re: My sixth year as a bootstrapped founder

#68

Post by jrockway »

spencerflem wrote: post #12
abfan1127 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

in what sense is it getting worse? While there may be local minima, I'd argue that its the best its ever been. News has always been pessimistic because negative emotions are easier to trigger to drive attention which pays the bills.

Whether the world as a whole is getting worse is debatable, but I think it's very clear that tech companies are

Yeah, I mean, these companies are at the end of their "startup" lifecycle and are now just ordinary big companies that exist to chill and produce dividends. When you hear "Amazon", think "IBM". When you hear "Apple", think "Coca Cola". When you hear "Google", think "Goldman Sachs". All of those companies make an enormous amount of money but haven't done anything interesting in 50 years.

There will be new startups that eclipse all of these companies in interestingness. The one for the next 20 years is probably OpenAI.

Re: My sixth year as a bootstrapped founder

#69

Post by spencerflem »

mym1990 wrote: post #66
DanHulton wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of things are getting superficially better (personal computing tech has never been more incredible), but there's a lot scary shit that is encroaching on the daily without sufficient plans in place to really deal with. Off the top of my head: - Global warming and how we don't seem to have any plans to a path to hit any of the less-than-apocalyptic warming targets, - Corporate regulatory capture, with more and mo…

Would you agree that whatever you are currently working on, either at Nodewood or evisort, is contributing to this superficial betterment of the world? Not to be dense but you are talking about empathy for people who are at the bottom of the human totem pole while posting on a tech forum while working on products that most likely don't contribute anything to actually making the world a better place. If you really car…

Isn't that sad though? An entire industry that in your own words doesn't "contribute anything to actually making the world a better place"

I think people realize this more than they used to which explains so much of the tech pessimism

Re: My sixth year as a bootstrapped founder

#70

Post by OJFord »

Aerbil313 wrote: post #60
tgtweak wrote: post #51

I think people (and the founder) are focusing on yearly profits as their remuneration and comparing it to a salary... but the reality is you're creating a company that should be valued (and eventually sell) for 7-15X Earnings - and you really should be looking at that increase in value vs your increase in profits. In reality your net worth went up by over $1.5 million in the last year, in addition to earning 236k - t…

> …but the reality is you're creating a company that should be valued (and eventually sell) for 7-15X Earnings - and you really should be looking at that increase in value vs your increase in profits. Muslim here. I think this is completely immoral and I don’t want to ever participate in stock market if/when I found a company. I want my business to be valued with the actual value it provides to people (the amount the…

What's the difference when the 'product' is the company itself? When a buyer comes along offering 7-15x the company's earnings for it, why is that not 'the actual value it provides' them?
Post reply on HN