
I bootstrapped my private-journaling project into a lifestyle business - ChanningAllen
https://www.indiehackers.com/interview/063525ef84
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busterbenson
I’m the creator of the site in question and am just seeing this thread. Happy
to answer questions about motivations, costs, etc if you give me a minute to
finish lunch and get back to my computer!

~~~
soneca
Congrats on the success!

The dominant advice for bootstrappers is to make a B2B product. Do you agree
with this advice?

Any tips for bootstrapping going B2B? What are the biggest differentiators
that a bootstrapper that really wants to go B2C should include in their
product?

How can I work for you at 750words? :)

~~~
busterbenson
Thank you! I'm a firm believer that I agree with all advice sometimes,
including my own. In that spirit, my advice that is sometimes useful is to
ignore B2B and B2C labels and to look instead at what you think you can build
that people would be willing to pay for. Then to test that hypothesis as early
and as many times as possible. The biggest difference between bootstrapping
and VC-strapping is that every step on the path of bootstrapping has to be
able to sustain itself long enough to get to the next step. SaaS models are
great for this because they can scale with the revenue. I'm happy to go into
more detail about any of this but it's a huge topic so we'd need to narrow it
down a bit more to prevent this from turning into a novel.

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vbsteven
One of the main takeaways is that it’s still running on a very old version of
Rails and JQuery.

Maybe not great from a security standpoint but it shows that you do not need a
Kubernetes cluster and a big HA setup and a modern language/framework for a
profitable project.

Btw, the site does not load past the initial splash quote in Firefox on iOS
with Tracking Protection enabled. Disabling tracking protection fully loads
the page.

~~~
buboard
This is the difference between hacker news and indiehackers. People here are
still dissecting the javascript virtues of the website in disbelief. Most
indie hackers would agree it doesn't matter.

~~~
c0vfefe
Focusing on technical value vs. business value.

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blorenz
I'm curious why with $20K MRR it will take a Kickstarter to create a mobile
app.

~~~
randlet
I don't know if this is the case here, but I think even if you don't really
"need" the money, using Kickstarter can be a great way to get more exposure
for a project as well as pre-selling/validating a product which reduces the
risk of investing development time.

~~~
Topgamer7
As well people willing to pay validates the market desire.

~~~
radcon
Not to mention letting backers shoulder the risk in case the project fails.
It's practically free money assuming you act in good faith and don't blatantly
defraud people.

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aiisjustanif
> The words you write are saved and locked away, only for you to ever look at,
> so you can write whatever's really on your mind without fear of it getting
> out.

Hmmm... Is it wrong I don't trust anyone with the data of my private
ramblings.

~~~
c0vfefe
The answer is client-side encryption.
[https://standardnotes.org/](https://standardnotes.org/)

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bovermyer
I completely forgot about 750 Words. I used to use that a lot about a decade
ago.

It makes sense that it went to a pay model. Maybe I'll have another go at it.

That blog post is full of interesting links, though. Well worth reading
through the whole thing.

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AimForTheBushes
Great read! I'm glad he's finding success with it but I couldn't help to think
how easy it is to accomplish this with iOS notes.

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pmoriarty
Is there any way I could read this article without enabling javascript?

~~~
egwynn
Probably not. Looks like the contents is loaded from Firebase after the main
page loads. Not taking sides on whether this is a good/bad thing, just
answering the question.

~~~
buboard
the maker of indiehackers has said in the past that he probably wouldn't make
it a SPA if he started over.

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liveoneggs
great product, excellent story

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oil25
Would like to read this, but I just get a blank page with Javascript disabled.
Looks like I can't even archive the page -
[https://archive.fo/kLTbo](https://archive.fo/kLTbo). Looking at the page
source code, it's completely unreadable - just a single line with a bunch of
third party scripts and trackers. Disappointment over what the Web has become
ensues.

~~~
rtkwe
"I disabled one of the core technologies of the modern web and it breaks
things."

~~~
komali2
I get your point in general regarding the internet, but I'm not clear at all
on how Javascript would be required for _any_ of the tasks in this website.

1\. Show text content

2\. Make the text content look good

3\. Allow submission to a comment section

All of those things can be accomplished with some or none javascript. Why make
the job harder than necessary? Why screw over screenreaders?

Oh, I see there's a graph there, that probably would use some JS. But why not
just hide the graph for noscript users?

~~~
inetknght
Why not pre-render the graph and serve the pre-rendered image?

~~~
komali2
That'd be even better! I'm not sure how I'd do that off the top of my head, or
if I'd bother for a blog post, but it's definitely a good idea.

I think the mouseover behavior on the graph is cool though so having both (one
for javascript people, one for non-JS people) is smart.

It's completely inaccessible to screenreaders, though. I just get "Average
Monthly Revenue 2012- 2018 canvas element."

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countryqt30
Not trying to downtalk, but it took you 11 years to pull this off? This is
some massively slow growth :D

~~~
ska

      Not trying to downtalk
    

But then you went ahead and did anyway...

~~~
tozeur
He prefaced to let OP know that he doesn’t intend to be disparaging and only
wants to offer feedback. Not every critique is a personal attack...

~~~
ska
I didn't see any feedback. Just a statement of questionable veracity that
reads negatively, to me at least.

~~~
dhruvkar
I wouldn't jump to that conclusion.

Given that many users here aren't native English speakers/writers, the tone
that might seem obvious to you & I, might actually be completely inadvertent.

~~~
giarc
Using the :D emoji at the end is a way for the author to reiterate the "No
offense but..." type statement. The problem is, if they use that, it's likely
they recognize their comment can be taken the wrong way and should have just
rephrased it instead of taking the easy way out with the :D.

