Wait a second... we'll have to find a new word for the concept currently known as bootstrapping, because articles like these make the word completely meaningless.
Bootstrapping means creating a self-sustaining business. At a minimum, this means you have revenue to cover your running costs. You can only say "bootstrap with less than $10K" if that 10K gives your business enough revenue to cover its running costs. Yet this is what one of the founders has to say in another comment here on HN: We will try first to build a community/traffic and then will look for revenues.
I guess it's not the founders' fault that the article was written this way. But once they've spent a lot of time and money on actually building their community/traffic + the inevitable further development costs, and they start making some revenue, we'll know how much it cost them to bootstrap the business.
Some great tips for getting an MVP together though.
Yeah, according to the metric used by this article, I've been bootstrapping my startup for under $1k over the past 8 months. And I don't find what I'm doing to be all that incredible.
I think this is part of the misconception that many Europeans have about "the way startups work." Even if they read everything that's published, the "Hey, this new thing just launched!" and "This Social Network for Dogs is a STARTUP!" fluff outnumbers the "Yeah, we busted ass and charged real money" meat 10:1.
Naturally, what's more common is what sticks in their minds.
As an American in Vienna, I find this kind of cargo-culting everywhere.
Having spent enough time in both places I can tell you that it's much, much, much worse here. In SV, you have actual businesses to counter-weight. Here, you don't.
One of the things that always bothers me about the "How to build and launch a product with <$X" articles is the fact that they almost always talk about the costs of outsourcing design/development but almost never talk about the actual costs of living for founders. You know what I'd love to see? Articles about how a couple of scrappy founders cut their living costs to the bone, keep the majority of development in-house (assuming there's a tech founder), and outsource when needed. All of this while trying to get to launch/MVP before the founders' savings run out or need to concentrate on consulting for a while to pay the bills.
Why wait for articles to be written? Why not do it yourself?
We built http://letsfreckle.com for "free" -- did all the work ourselves, while consulting.
If you're really passionate, you'll find a way. Sure, it would have been nice to have foregone the "while consulting" part, and done nothing but focus on our product all day long... but nobody was handing us a free lunch. So we did it, the way we could do it, without any particular hardship except being tired and annoyed.
EDIT: fixed tense. Living in a non-English-speaking country is wreaking havoc with my grammar.
Asking "why wait for articles" is like saying why use tutorials or guides for anything at all? Why not just learn it all by doing it yourself? Besides, I think there's a bit of a strawman here. I'm not saying I'd like to avoid consulting to pay the bills.
There is a lot of value in learning from other people's experiences. Spencer Fry has a fantastic article on the topic of bootstrapping in general(http://spencerfry.com/how-to-bootstrap) but I'd really love to see somebody get down to the nitty gritty financial details of dollars in vs. dollars out - the holy crap, how are we going to pay rent in 2 months? stuff - in the stages of a startup that hasn't yet reached ramen profitability.
I'm not saying that "reading articles" and "doing it yourself" are opposed at all. I read a ridiculous amount about other people's experiences... including old business books, 10, 15, 50 years old, because the principles are still the same, and their experiences are still valid.
But, when it comes down to it... how do you handle a startup before it's profitable? Simple: the same way you'd handle unemployment, a sabbatical, taking time off to take care of a baby, or whatever else you'd want to do that would drastically limit (or entirely eliminate) your income.
You create a budget, you decide how long you plan to live without income, you figure out a way to come up with the product of Your Budget x Months Without Income.
Information and advice on budgeting for any type of time-without-income will do the trick for you, if you need more guidance. Startups aren't special.
What good would it help you to know how much my rent is?
Wow, congrats. It's a really cool product and the UI is amazing.
Till what point did you work on it part time and when did you decide to take it full time (I'm assuming you did given the polish of the app).
Thanks, glad you like it! We're still not full-time on it. To put it a little bluntly, the polish comes from my hard-won experience as an interaction designer, and a partner who is willing to make the "hard shit" work just right.
No, but I did quit consulting in January to focus exclusively on products. I am all about doing multiple things and having multiple revenue streams. That said, Freckle will be earning enough to live on comfortably in the next 2-3 mos though, based on my forecasts. :) We are rolling a significant amount of that money back into promotion, and hiring help.
So, that makes me wonder: Since January, what have you been doing to earn money? How are you funding yourself? Paying for rent, food, internet connectivity? Did you save money? Borrow? Family? Have other means of incoming rolling in? You mention doing multiple things. What are these other things? It conflicts with the message you send when you say "focus exclusively on products."
I think those are the questions some people would like answered. Not because we are challenging you, but to understand the reality.
None of what I said conflicts with "focusing exclusively on products," but since you want more background information, here it is.
How did we keep a roof over our heads? The old fashioned way: working our asses off, saving, and with the cultivation of multiple income streams, as I mentioned above.
1. We did some consulting projects that we wouldn't have otherwise taken on, and saved the money. We raised our rates for a couple of these clients dramatically, because they absolutely required us, and the projects had tremendous time pressure.
3. We also developed a 1-day and 2-day variant of a JavaScript workshop, with a different angle than all others, and have given it twice times to individuals (selling tickets) and twice to corporations in 2010. We originally developed this course in Sept 09, and we've heavily revised and expanded it, but it's the same "product" we're taking around the world. Just like with the consulting, we saved the money. http://jsmasterclass.com
4. I'm teaching a course on how to bootstrap your first product to earn your first $1000 - http://yearofhustle.com. It's a 12-week course and the first round is just about over now. I tested the idea by doing a 3-hour teleconference call and selling tickets for $100 to start with, and the main feedback customers gave me was "MORE!" Then I... you guessed it... saved the money. (This one is just me and a friend, not with my husband.)
If things got bad, I would take on more consulting work, bust ass, and save again. Although I don't think I'll ever have to do that again, given the success of my or our various infoproducts/classes/training courses.
It's simple: I refuse to do anything but bootstrap. I will never take a penny in venture capital. I will never let the outside demands of another person screw with my career again.
I am also fully committed to doing whatever it takes to succeed, and that means being my own angel.
So when I decided those things, I sat my ass down and did my best to figure out how I could get money, fast, and with the least amount of effort.
I certainly won't fail because I believe, on some level, that there is something so special about me that I deserve to be able to work on just one thing and have my bills taken care of.
Enough information for you?
EDIT: By the way -- yes, I'm not doing it alone (and my husband is no slacker in the code department), but it's my grand plan. And, more importantly, this process is accelerating, because we're using the money earned/saved to pay a freelancer to help us develop our 2nd SaaS product, which will launch in September.
EDIT AGAIN: We launched Freckle in Dec 2008, by the way. We/I wrote the book in 2008/2009 (started selling as a beta in Jan 2009). We developed the course in Sept 09. All while heavily consulting.
> None of what I said conflicts with "focusing exclusively on products,"
Sorry, I didn't mean to imply that. What I meant to say is that it seems to conflict, or wasn't clear. I wasn't questioning what you were saying, I was just curious and wanted you to expand. Sorry if it came off as confrontational.
> Enough information for you?
I assumed, correctly, that what you did was a bit more than just what your short post made it out to be. You hustled, and you work hard. It's interesting to see how some people do it.
And yes. All this information is actually useful. It's encouraging to hear success stories.
Honestly, information like this is incredibly useful and at the very least, encouraging. =)
Edit: I get the sense that I might have offended you in some way. Maybe I'm being overly sensitive, but I'd rather just say that wasn't my intent. Again, I wasn't questioning you. I was just asking honest questions. Being curious. No offense was intended.
No need to backpedal quite so much. You didn't offend me.
I am angry, but not at you. I'm sure it's not The Done Thing to admit you're pissed at your audience on the internet, but here goes: I'm pissed at my audience!
I am so freakin tired of people who whine about how it's tiring to work after their work, or that it's rough to work on two or more things at once, or that all they really wanna do is just work on their little pet project and not have to worry about bills.
It just smacks of entitlement. And, worse, avoidable failure.
Look, here's the thing. My story? Not remarkable. Not special. Not new.
I'm happy if you read it and feel encouraged. That's why I keep writing about it. But the fact is, I'm just doing what successful people have done forever -- hustlin the shit out of everything I got, and then some. Not sitting on their butt, not complaining, not waiting for an invitation, not waiting for somebody to map out the territory before they start walking.
If you really want to be inspired, look to biographies. Try one about Ben Franklin to start with.
I guarantee you that if you* read about what he did and where he came from, you will be knocked on your ass with humility when you look at the amount of effort you are expending and what you expect to happen in return.
> I'm happy if you read it and feel encouraged. That's why I keep writing about it. But the fact is, I'm just doing what successful people have done forever -- hustlin the shit out of everything I got, and then some. Not sitting on their butt, not complaining, not waiting for an invitation, not waiting for somebody to map out the territory before they start walking.
While I agree with your sentiment, and understand what you mean from first hand experience, I think you might be confusing two type of people. There are people who will do nothing but complain, whine, and wait for that invitation.
But there are other people who are looking for more practical things. And here's the thing, saying you hustle the shit out of everything you got isn't exactly saying a whole lot.
Great. You hustle. But their is a big difference between hustling an ebook on javascript and hustling at an actual job. The ebook requires more time up front I imagine. The job requires constant time. I'm pretty sure finding a part time job instead of the ebook would have hurt in the long run.
It's practical stuff like that which helps some people. Knowing that you've sold 1400+ copies demonstrates that yes, their is a market for that sort of thing. I guess what I'm trying to say is that while you aren't doing anything new, their are specifics that allow you to succeed in what you do. Those specifics go a lot farther.
I could say my startup succeeded because I worked hard. That's true enough, but their are a lot of things I did to make it work, and that's the reality. That's the meat of it.
> No need to backpedal quite so much. You didn't offend me.
I tend to be an opinionated ass. I'm trying hard to change; I'm rather paranoid I still come off that way.
There are lots of people who "are looking for more practical things" to come to them, rather than seeking them out. Why, for example, does everyone have this bias for new stories about how people made the odds work in their favor? There are so many old ones. Why wait for new stories to appear on HN? Why not spend that time in the library instead?
Why trust my story more than Ben Franklin's? Or Richard Branson's? Or 37Signals'?
Their stories are out there for the taking.
To you, I'm just some random voice on the internet.
Sure, you're right, there are people who will whine and never do a thing, and people who have better potential (judging from this current moment in time, anyway). But a lot of those people with potential are waiting for the stories to come to them. Like they're saying, _You old world, you bastard, I'm going to sit here until you prove I can do it. I refuse._
The exact recipes for success are available everywhere. You don't need to wait for some random chick on HN who gets her jollies yelling at people to get off their asses. Waiting gets you nowhere.
As for the ebook -- the earnings divided by the time it took was less than what I could have made consulting, but the reward is more than just the money it made directly - although that's an appreciable amount.
You didn't need me to prove there was a market for "that kind of thing," either. People have been proving that for decades. Just look at all the people who make a great living selling information products alone.
FTR: I never said that the reason for my success was "hard work" or "hustle." That's part of it, yes, but I never just say that.
Great example of what Guy Kawasaki (and many others to be fair) have been preaching for quite some time now. If you have a web-based idea there's really no excuse not to give it a shot.
Related to this great post I also suggest 1) the StartupTools wiki (started by the awesome guys at Songkick) http://startuptools.pbwiki.com/ and 2) a post I read last night about how to hire a programmer to make your idea happen (http://sivers.org/how2hire).
I agree that this app is going to face fierce competition from well funded companies, but the accomplishment so far is great so congrats and best of luck!
Derek's post is one of the best to date about hiring programmers for short projects or outsourcing purposes.
I still believe the best way to hire tech talent is to develop relationships as you'll have to trust the guy with your product and IP. Meet people at ruby-python-whatever user groups, find people you could comfortably live with and then try to work together on something.
Great job of getting to MVP on the cheap! But it seems like a budget of $10K or so would only work for relatively simple apps. Doing something like Dropbox, 280Atlas, or FlightCaster (probably) would take significantly more money.
Any suggestions for how you'd proceed if you knew up front that you were facing a much longer development cycle?
I'm not the founder, but IMHO such a project can not be developed on your spare time.
I guess the process that Marco used can be replicated for simple freemium saas web apps and mobile applications.
280North and Dropbox are developing brand new and break-trough technology; they need a full team of experienced hackers, loads of money and a grand vision to realize that.
You are right, tipsandtrip is a relatively simple project (web + api + iphone) but I think that a similar process can be used also on larger project to build a MVP that can be launched and shown to investors. Better to have something working to show than a couple dozen of slides ;-)
Newbie question: the thing that always puzzles me is where these folks get their data from (in this case the list of restaurants with details). Anybody know how one can go about getting their hands on stuff like that? Is it all available for free on some site I just haven't heard of yet?
No revenues at the moment. Working with remote teams is fine if you use the right tools (redmine, svn for example) and if you try to avoid working with people on the other part of the ocean. We worked with people in Argentina, Japan, India, Ukraine and Russia. The last two are at the moment the countries where we find the highest programming skills.
Bootstrapping means creating a self-sustaining business. At a minimum, this means you have revenue to cover your running costs. You can only say "bootstrap with less than $10K" if that 10K gives your business enough revenue to cover its running costs. Yet this is what one of the founders has to say in another comment here on HN: We will try first to build a community/traffic and then will look for revenues.
I guess it's not the founders' fault that the article was written this way. But once they've spent a lot of time and money on actually building their community/traffic + the inevitable further development costs, and they start making some revenue, we'll know how much it cost them to bootstrap the business.
Some great tips for getting an MVP together though.