Bootstrapping Design
Published in 2011, this chronicle by @timf details the mechanics of building a profitable, self-funded business without venture backing.
Core Principles for Independent Builders:
Charging customers from day one acts as the ultimate filter for building software that solves genuine, high-urgency problems.
Keeping fixed overhead low and leveraging lean infrastructure allows founders to stay alive until market tailwinds kick in.
Small, repetitive improvements in customer retention and conversion rates yield massive returns over multi-year horizons.
Community Debate Themes:
The community focused on B2B customer acquisition channels, cold email vs SEO distribution, and balancing full-time employment with side-project development.
CATEGORY Bootstrapping & MRR →
HISTORICAL ERA Web 2.0 Genesis (2007–2013)
COMMUNITY SCORE 153 points
TOTAL DISCUSSIONS 68 comments
I'm all for getting developers some design skills and I'm sure the book will help. That said mastering anything takes time. Could you give a designer a Rails for Dummies book and claim "Save thousands by not hiring a developer"?
Update:
I'm a full time developer now but I graduated with a design degree. It took me two years of full time development to become a competent developer. Mostly because when I started out I didn't know what I didn't know.
From time to time I pick up design gigs, but I'm a mediocre designer now, mainly because my skills have atrophied. I obviously have a leg up on my dev colleagues, but that's not saying much! However if I had a startup I would definitely hire a pro designer. They're not really that expensive, think of it this way; you're a developer your time is worth, what $100-150/hr? Spend your time developing and pay a designer $50/hr.
A lot of people who buy this book are going to be developers who think that they can learn good taste in design from a book. It doesnt work that way.
Its all about practice, feedback from someone knowledgeable and iteration. Open up photoshop and try to create a design. You will bumble around like a fool for the first day - even if all your trying to draw is a smiley face.
But as you do this and as you scour the internet for tutorials and start practicing, it gets easier.
Get feedback from someone in the biz (it takes 10 minutes to look at a design and give feedback). Heed the advice and do more designs.
And all said and done the information to do this is already out there on the internet.
All in all, for me, it was just another case of overcoming my learned helplessness.
It's unfair to judge this book before reading it, but the web page promoting it reads like an infomercial. Specifically, "You are a designer." and "Save thousands by not hiring a designer." make me feel like there is going to be a chapter about making font size smaller and jacking up leading.
What am I getting by reading this? Is it design basics that let me get started with modifying something? Is it the fundamentals? Is it a rundown of common contemporary design elements that can be combined to make a reasonable looking page?
Professional designers aren't selling overpriced witchcraft.
My experience is primarily back-end development, so I'm a complete UI design dummy. I have a stupid question that I always mean to look into "when I have time" - - given topic, perhaps someone on this thread can answer.
Why does the font in the input box on the bootstrappingdesign lander look so screwy and hard to read, relative to the rest of the page? (I'm running Chrome on a vanilla Windows 7 box.)
http://i.imgur.com/TgQjV.gif ↗
I love the idea, but I don't think the page does a good job of selling itself on design merits. Your eyes immediately go to the tertiary copy ("The new eBook for bootstrappers..." etc) because that's where the highest contrast is highest.
The ostensible header ("Become the designer...") is almost invisible (I didn't see it for the first 30 seconds). My eyes keep wanting to drift back down to where the contrast is higher.
So paint me as skeptical.