“Indie” doesn't mean “bootstrapped” anymore
Published in 2020, this chronicle by @ojosilva 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 Pandemic Bubble (2020–2022)
COMMUNITY SCORE 67 points
TOTAL DISCUSSIONS 25 comments
I've been a full-time 'indie' computer game developer for about five years now and in the gamedev space 'indie' hasn't really meant any one thing for most of the last decade. I'm a solo guy who does art & animation, programming, writing, marketing, and so on (I have an accountant and I contracts a friend who helps with the music), working on original IP, with no outside inventment, self-publishing - which is about as 'indie' as it gets, I suppose. However, 'indie' is often applied to teams of 20+ people, sometimes either with outside investment, or who work with publishing companies. Lots of publishers are 'indie publishers' too, operations are built to work with smaller teams and budgets.
And I'm totally fine with all of that! Proclaiming that "I'm indier than thou" might get you some (utterly meaningless) clout with... well, I don't know who. The main thing is I find encouraging is there's a number of proven ways to run a sustainable software business. And that's nice to know, because if at some point I need to or want to change how I'm doing things, it isn't a one-size-fits-all scenario.
When I depended on poker for my income, I always thought one should work up to the next higher-stake game by building a bankroll at one's current level. People who moved up in betting limits via someone else's money rarely survived there (the level of play tends to increase with higher stakes).
I see a fair amount of discussion about the "what is indie" angle here, but I most appreciated this article for pointing out various funding options that do not carry hyper-growth expectations. I suppose taking any money at all violates the rules of my previous paragraph, but it still seems closer in spirit than traditional VC. I don't know that I'll ever attempt to start a business again, but if I did, I would certainly look more into those options.
It's a common misconception to think that Basecamp never took any investment but in fact they did from Jeff Bezos.
https://signalvnoise.com/archives2/bezos_expeditions_invests_in_37signals.php ↗
That said, it helps prove the OP point that's it's possible to raise funds and remain independent.
"Indie" has been marketed into meaninglessness like "Agile", "Hacker" or "Mindfulness". These terms usually lose their meaning once they go mainstream and become cool.
Being independent isn't a binary yes/no thing. But people who built their business from their own savings are a lot more independent than people who took investment, whatever the source.