ScrumPad Offers Free Subscription for Bootstrapped Startups
ScrumPad, a popular and intuitive Web-based Agile project management tool, has recently made its service available to bootstrapped startups. According to the company Website, any startup with only founders on the team and without any external funding is eligible for the free service. If you are a bootstrapped startup and would like to track & manage your product development activities, you should check it out.
Published in 2010, this chronicle by @srayhan 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 13 points
TOTAL DISCUSSIONS 10 comments
http://www.scrumpad.com/public/faq#g6 ↗
How do we cancel?
You can cancel at anytime from within ScrumPad (Admin > Cancel Subscription). You are responsible for any amount due at the time of cancelation(sp). There is no undo for cancellation. Once your account is cancelled(sp), all your project information will be immediately and permanently deleted. In future, we will allow you to export all project data for a fee.
I would seriously rethink this. There should not be a fee to cancel. I would personally never pay for a service that would lock me in like that. My data is my data and I am only using any service for organization of that data.(project management, todo lists, etc)
It also adds a barrier to entry because once a customer chooses to try it out they are stuck with it. On the other hand if you were to allow free export it would be a definite selling point. Will they have to pay a fee at the end of a 30 day trial to export the data?
I would also suggest not deleting the data for at least a month or two. Just disable the actions of the site.
To build on my comment below "...I think it's a good design. The #fail didn't come until i clicked the (bootstrapped) link and landed on a FAQ not related to the promotion..."
After spending a few minutes on the site I found in the signup form, when i hovered over the tiny little ? icon what the criteria is for this promotion. Great, I qualify. However, the signup form is VERY painful. Do you really need all that info? The only thing you probably need are Company Name, Email and Password. Assume everything else and give the users a way to set those once they've signed up.
This is just my 2 cents. Overall your design, and the product itself looks really good. The signup just seems to be a weakness.
Syed - Are you A/B testing the three big bullet points at the top of the page? I read all three, and said "I'm pretty satisfied with what I use today, maybe, no." I probably would have left the page then under any other circumstances (update: "any other circumstances" meaning had I not found this link through HN posted by the founder of the company).
Also, the 'free for bootstrapped startups' section is below the fold on my 1680x1050px screen. Plus, the text in that section (once I found it) doesn't give me a lot of confidence in your longevity (don't get me wrong, I'm bootstrapped, too. It's just a psychological hurdle other users of yours will need to overcome).
Can't find any more information. The link at the bottom of the homepage takes you to the FAQs and a hashtag with seemingly nothing there.