Startups that have bootstrapped their way to profitability
Published in 2014, this chronicle by @uptown 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 Cloud & Mobile Era (2014–2019)
COMMUNITY SCORE 133 points
TOTAL DISCUSSIONS 63 comments
What classifies as "bootstrapped" these days?
Because many of the companies on the list have taken VC/Angel money.
The following have taken VC/Angel money:
- Github [1]
- 37signals [2]
- BigCommerce [3]
- BrainTree [4]
[1] http://www.crunchbase.com/company/github ↗ [2] http://www.crunchbase.com/company/37signals ↗ [3] https://angel.co/bigcommerce ↗ [4] http://www.crunchbase.com/company/braintree-payment-solutions ↗
For anyone looking for some inspiration across the pond in the UK, we're a bootstrapped company that started with just the two of us (OpenRent - Launched in 2012 [1]).
We're currently letting in the thousands of properties each month, saving tenants and landlords huge amounts of money - and we're certainly still growing (both in raw properties let each month, and revenue)!
Clearly there are avenues to success for VC backed companies, as well as those going it alone, so not sure what can be drawn from this article other than a bit of inspiration...
[1] https://www.openrent.co.uk ↗
What strikes me is the geographic diversity of this list. If you look at the classic startup with young founders and big VC investments, they're almost all in Silicon Valley or San Francisco. But this list shows that you can start a business in anywhere with a reasonable tech scene.
1 Carbonmade: Chicago
2 Github: San Francisco
3 Clicky: Portland, OR
4 WooThemes: Cape Town, SA
5 AppSumo: Austin
6 Mailchimp: Atlanta
7 37Signals: Chicago
8 Envato: Melbourne, Australia
9 Litmus: Boston
10 Bigcommerce: Austin
11 Braintree: Silicon Valley
12 Freshbooks: Toronto
Adding to this list is EventMobi[1]. We help over 4000+ events & conferences in 25+ countries create cross-platform apps for their attendees.
We've grown our team to about 35 people across our Toronto (HQ), Berlin and Virginia offices and are planning to grow to about 60 people by years end.
We just hit our 4th birthday a week ago, and are now expanding to providing the complete toolset for event planners to help make planning, running, and gather data about events easier.
[1]http://www.eventmobi.com ↗
Its not properly researched. Github is VC backed now [1][2].
[1] - http://gigaom.com/2012/07/09/github-finally-raises-funding-100m-from-andreessen-horowitz/ ↗ [2] - http://techcrunch.com/2012/07/09/github-pours-energies-into-enterprise-raises-100-million-from-power-vc-andreesen-horowitz/ ↗