Curated list for bootstrapping developers
Published in 2013, this chronicle by @adparadox 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 59 points
TOTAL DISCUSSIONS 19 comments
I'm a bootstrapped developer. My product http://followgen.com ↗ does 5 figures a month.
My blog: http://myles.io ↗ - I talk mainly about my experiences building followgen.
My book: 'The Hacker's Guide to Passive Income' is pretty much what it sounds like, though it's a work in progress on Leanpub https://leanpub.com/passiveincome ↗
You should add Fog Creek Software. I think Joel Spolsky inspired many of the founders of companies you admire. Joel's blog was like HN for me before I was on HN, along with his message board that ultimately morphed into stackoverflow and their job board. I miss the old Joel on Software. Maybe I just don't go there enough anymore but it seems like the blog is dead and the old readers are here.
I started http://lifestyle.io ↗ to be a sort of HN for bootstrappers. I'd fallen off posting during Army training last month.
Is there any interest in me continuing that side project? I'm happy to spend the 10 minutes each day hand-curating of its genuinely useful to even 10 or 15 people.
If you're interested in podcasts, there's an excellent table of podcasts accompanying an episode of Startups for the Rest of Us [1].
[1] http://www.startupsfortherestofus.com/episodes/episode-104-podcasts-for-startup-founders ↗
I've been writing quite a bit over the last 1.5 years on bootstrapping Planscope / my other products: http://planscope.io/blog/category/bootstrapping-and-products/ ↗