Bootstrapping a Software Product
Published in 2011, this chronicle by @garrettdimon details the mechanics of building a profitable, self-funded business without venture backing.
The community focused on B2B customer acquisition channels, cold email vs SEO distribution, and balancing full-time employment with side-project development.
Great deck for those of us working toward a switch from a service model to a product model. It's rare that the lifestyle aspects (marriage, home, children) are covered in decks about startups or bootstrapping, but those are such HUGE considerations if you have (or want) a life outside of your work.
I'm not a Sifter user (different needs), but I've gleaned a lot of professional insight from your posts/interviews/presentations in the last few months. Thanks for sharing so openly.
I've been aware of Sifter for a while but it's great to get the inside story.
I particularly liked your point about building features that no-one used - I'm sure it was kinda hard to watch all that hard work go to waste.
You might have covered this in your talk, but which features did you add that you could have omitted? Without having that usage data early on, is there any way you could have done this differently?
Your slides are awesome by the way :)
Great slides! I especially enjoyed the "great decisions"/"bad decisions" part, I catched myself currently doing some of the "bad decisions" - like focusing too much on short term ups and downs.
Can you share the PDF? The link on SpeakerDeck doesn't work.
What made you get into this market in particular? What are your main channels for new customers? What were the biggest lessons on the business and marketing end?
Thank you so much for posting this. I particularly liked the timeline showing what was going on in your life as you built Sifter.
Slides obviously miss a lot of context if you didn't attend the presentation, so I'd love to chat with folks or answer questions if anybody has them.