I'm surprised to see this on the front-page. It really doesn't seem to have much substance, just aspiration-porn driving sales of their product. I was hoping to read about how to get started, pitfalls to watch out for, etc.
You get started by sharpening your tools and learning about how business works.
For me, it was mostly podcasts on commutes and physical chores. I listened to podcasts about web development, JavaScript, backend, data flows, infrastructure. I built small systems that used this understanding, cementing it in my brain with the pros and cons of approaches where the rubber meets the road. Then I listened to podcasts about small business, particular successful SaaS companies, marketing, sales approaches, management, hiring and all the ingredients that made them successful. Side benefit of this exploratory research is that it makes you very valuable in the market.
Find a need, think of how to serve that need, judge its longevity, quality, and value. Then you put your now sharp tools to work. Idea evaluation is a good skill, and required. You need to be brutally rational about the ideas. Emotional attachment helps drive your motivation to work on it, but it won't magically make customers appear.
Then you try to execute. Good execution is the hardest part, and you give yourself the best shot by head down improvements in your skills. For software, your first goal is to produce something that serves the need and can acquire a few paying customers. The less "other stuff" involved the better, just serve the need. Once you have paying customers leverage their feedback to grow the product and pick the best direction to feel out where the market for it really is. Non-paying feedback is much worse than someone else with skin in the game, paying customers are key.
It's a lot more blood and sweat than the article seems to point out. I like bootstrapping, but it means long evenings and weekends unless you have a sizable nest egg for a runway. Or better if you can afford to work only part-time and can find an accommodating position.
Be ready to fail the first few times and try again. 2-3 significant failures under your belt is pretty normal for a successful SaaS bootstrapper.
If you have the stomach and drive for it. Then you to can reach this definition of success.
There are tons of small underserved markets that would provide nicely for an individual or small team.
This is my best information. It really isn't all one or the other.
I've created 3 products thus far. One is abandoned as failed. One is currently flirting with profitability with about 30 paying customers, there is definitely a positive market signal here, and I'm trying to take it to the next level. The other is an MVP, but it is apparently still missing bits to give it a real go in the market, so it needs more investment. All of my products are B2C.
I've also been working at small businesses for years and have built several products that are not mine. Mostly MVPs style products, but also some more ambitious projects. Mostly I've been the solo dev, but occasionally I run a team. These have also been, largely, marketplace failures. Some have seen success.
I've been really living and working micro-saas for about 3-4 years as both founder and dev. I feel like I've trained my instincts correctly. I WILL make this work, even if I have to build #4, #5, and #6.
Jason Cohen talks a bit about why creating a B2C business is extremely difficult, and why B2B is better for self-funded startups. Amazing talk, and everything he said matches what I have seen of other businesses locally and my own experience (I am a successful B2B self-funded co-founder in one of the categories he mentioned).
The other microconf talks are also worth watching, as they have bits of very valuable information, but Jason’s talk is just next-level and all of his info seems solid.
I flitted around a bunch of others always looking for quality hosts and topics. I didn't like most of those I found with signal-to-noise too low. There were others, but I can't recall them off the top of my head. I didn't really maintain a list.
(I have followed this advice, and it has brought me a level of success and comfort I didn’t know I could have, as an admittedly run of the mill developer)
Wow - that is some very high quality information about bootstrapping. And I co-founded a profitable SaaS!
Caveat: when someone talented explains things, there is a lot of “it’s obvious” (to them) and they can easily explain why it is obvious, and it all sounds convincingly obvious (successful founders often are very convincing - correlation). However the details of how he learnt his opinions and the details really really are not obvious unless you have the right talents, or perhaps if you can develop the right skills (where it is only rarely obvious how to learn them well).
Aside: I loath the term micro-SaaS - especially when applied to a business with “$1,000,000 ARR” - but even the spelling is crappy. What does micro imply? Jason mentions at the start he prefers the word “self-funded” which I really like (presumably the title of the video uses “bootstrapped” because that’s more common?).
It's strange, it seems more like someone built the minimum number of sentences around a few tweets to make it seem like a story. If that's the work of an AI, then I'm impressed, otherwise I'm baffled.
The concept could be quite appealing to people who do a tour around a few tech companies and then are ready to de-accelerate in their career. Maybe they want to coast FIRE but still have income and do something with their time. Previously, these used to be called lifestyle businesses.
It’s not the same. To decelerate is to have d^2c/dt^2 < 0 (where c is the career measure). To de-accelerate is to reduce d^2c/dt^2 while d^2c/dt^2 remains > 0 (in other words, to make d^3/dt^3 < 0).
