Dear HN,
as part of my master's thesis I'm looking into bootstrapped software/ online businesses started by tech-savvy entrepreneurs. It appears to be common knowledge by now that starting a successful venture goes beyond having a brilliant product idea and building it, yet cause and effect of determinants within entrepreneurial processes and ventures are hard to assess. I am aware that "success" means different things to each and every one of you, so let me specify what I'm looking for:
"determinants": determining factors that the founder is (more or less) in control of, not external factors like timing etc.
"software business": software-enabled business that centers around a mostly digital business model/ product/ service
"successful": I'm specifically looking at anything from side-projects that caught on to tech founders who quit their job to pursue their own thing. I'm not looking for several founding rounds or hyper-scaling ventures, more like the kind of businesses you'd associate with Indie Hackers etc.
I'm also aware that attempts at defining "success factors" for such complex and luck-dependent processes such as entrepreneurship is a futile aspiration, but since I appreciate the broad collective experience within the HN crowd, I'd nevertheless love to have your thoughts on the question formulated by the title:
Based on your observations as well as personal and professional experience, what do you consider key determinants of starting successful (bootstrapped) online businesses?
Stories of negative influences (things not to do) are encouraged to counteract survivorship bias etc. Cheers!
