

Ask HN: successful, transparent bootstrappers? - sdrinf

Hey HN,<p>I'm currently digging into case studies on how to do startups in the bootstrapping way; and so I turn to the nice HN community: what other blogs fits into the criteria?<p>Definitions:<p>successful: $1k/month at minimum<p>transparent: blog describing the internal business process of creating the startup<p>bootstrapper: no external investment<p>The ones I know of:<p>http://www.balsamiq.com/blog   -balsamiq mockups<p>http://www.kalzumeus.com/   -patrick -bingo card creator (and others)<p>http://pluggio.com/blog/   -Pluggio (was: tweetminer)<p>Who else would fit into this criteria?
======
chops
I'm a single-founder, bootstrapped, successful (by your definition - my
monthly revenue has ranged from $2.5k to $13k since launch) startup founder. I
don't, however, have a public blog about how I run or started the business.
It's not that I'm trying to hide it, I just don't have a blog. My site is
<http://www.dkpsystem.com> (Hosting for MMO guilds). Woo self-promo.

A while back (over a year), I had a reasonably open discussion about it here:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=423249>

I'm not afraid to discuss just about any internal operation I do with my
business, I just don't have a blog yet. I started one a while back, but never
really updated it.

~~~
mahmud
You managed to earn a living from something I both don't understand _and_
despise :-)

------
mojombo
We meet those requirements here at GitHub: github.com. Along with the official
blog some of us also talk about the business on our own personal blogs:
<http://tom.preston-werner.com> and <http://ozmm.org>.

------
JangoSteve
I guess I'm a successful bootstrapper by your definition. Revenues vary, but
tens of multiples of your definition at this point (am I the only one that
still feels weird about divulging this info in public?). I'm a single-founder.

The startup is <http://www.ratemystudentrental.com>, which licenses private-
label subscriptions to universities. I also have a consultancy that builds
web-based software, and that consultancy has a new SAAS app
(<http://www.leadnuke.com>, which actually started as a solution for a problem
my startup was experiencing).

I haven't blogged a ton about the internals of business specifically, because
I find it somewhat dry (which means I rarely motivate myself to write about
it). I do blog about life and the emotional roller-coaster that I've
experienced in being an entrepreneur, though.

Blog about technical stuff (and sometimes entrepreneurship):
<http://www.alfajango.com/blog>

Blog about entrepreneurship, life, and whatever else: <http://jangosteve.com>

~~~
patio11
_am I the only one that still feels weird about divulging this info in
public?_

For me its kind of like boiling a frog. I get all kinds of queasy about
telling people what my _salary_ was (I was raised such that one just _did not
do_ that), but back when I was making all of $24.95 in sales a month well pfft
no harm in saying that... and then all you have to do is "not stop".

Amusing cultural note: Japan is almost totally open about salaries. I didn't
know what my father's approximate salary was until I was in my twenties. I
don't know what my friends make now. Here, I've been asked it on second dates
before, and the local sushi guy knew it without me even telling him. ("Well,
duh: engineer in Nagoya + I know your age. What else could your salary be?!"
_And he's right_.)

~~~
cullenking
My father raised me the opposite. He was always open about salaries but let me
know other people weren't always comfortable talking about it. It resulted in
me being pretty open about it personally, but I can understand where the
awkward thing comes from.

------
jamroom
Maybe it is just me, but I've never seen the reason for being "transparent"
about internal business processes. While I am certain that the HN crowd here
finds it interesting, our customers have never once asked us (in 8+ years) to
divulge our monthly sales figures. We are 100% focused on our customers, and
really don't worry what other entrepreneurs might think of our company. Does
anyone here have any stats that show that being "open" about your
sales/business processes improves the bottom line? That's something I'd love
to see - even some anecdotal evidence from those that have tried it (i.e. you
saw a boost in sales after becoming more transparent) would be nice.

You can add us (Talldude Networks) as a successful (almost 8 years) "startup",
completely self funded and roaring along.

~~~
sdrinf
It doesn't, but you miss an important point: essentially, the "product
business community" -those, who are in for the long run- is a small one. The
real ROI does not come from having more customers, but rather from business
contacts, who can (and will) provide important info, and valuable insight, for
you, at the right time, which will have real impact on your bottom line.

There are, of course, many others way to do that, than blogging. But the level
of needed transparency is roughly the same.

~~~
jamroom
This is an interesting point - thank you. What would you consider the level of
transparency to be? Does it mean sharing detailed revenue figures, or is it
more about simply being open about your "growing pains"? Thanks!

~~~
sdrinf
The two most valuable insights I'm getting from the blogs mentioned above are:
_context_, and _details_. Incidentally, revenue fits both (especially with
patrick, where evolution is trackable).

To get the most value out of business partners, you generally have to put us
into a position, where educated guesses can be made about which lever might
give you the best ROI, and what you shouldn't pull too much.

You don't need detailed revenue figures to make this happen. But, you are in
_business_. Your most important enabler is money. Business discussions
relevance to business will be correlating with it's proximate to money.

------
spencerfry
Self promotion alert, but I just wrote this last week and people seemed to
like it:

<http://spencerfry.com/how-to-bootstrap>

And then why you shouldn't be transparent:

<http://spencerfry.com/disclosing-your-finances>

~~~
sdrinf
I welcome self-promotion, but you don't seem to fit the "successful" criteria,
by revenue? do correct me, if I'm wrong.

~~~
pchristensen
Um, Carbonmade is profitable enough to have an NYC office and hire employees.
Seems successful to me.

------
modoc
Two out of three ain't bad?

While I'd like to blog about the internals and experience, we sell mostly in
the B2B large corporation space, and our small size is our largest pain point
during the sales cycle. I think an open blog about our internal business
growth would make things worse for us, not better.

~~~
yankeeracer73
Interesting - we're in the same space but I don't think I know a single paying
client of ours that actually reads our blog. Most of our readership comes from
Hacker News and friends - it's a little like living in two worlds.

------
mikesimonsen
I'd suggest you set your sites higher than $1k/month. $10k/month is a start.
$100k/month is a business that pays you and your employees. And there are
zillions of them out there to learn from. My blog isn't about the internals of
our business, but I'm happy to tell any bootstrapper who asks.

~~~
_delirium
That depends on the expenses (incl. # of employees), doesn't it? The
bootstrapped founders I know that I'd consider very successful don't make
$100k/month, but they also don't have employees. A two-founder business with
few expenses, clearing $20k/month profit, makes the founders $120k/yr apiece,
which seems pretty successful to me. Certainly more than ramen-profitable,
anyway!

~~~
mikesimonsen
Sure, you can have a "successful" business that grosses $250k / year. If you
can do that with no employees and go surf every day, there will be a lot of
jealous surfers out there.

But if you're looking to bootstrap a startup into a sustainable enterprise
that "solves the money problem" (as Paul puts it), there are plenty of
fabulous examples with $2million, $10mil, $50mil in revenue. Study them.

------
techiferous
ServerDensity is a transparent bootstrapped startup.

Product: <http://serverdensity.com>

Blog: <http://blog.boxedice.com/>

~~~
techiferous
Not sure why this was downvoted. This is (1) bootstrapped, (2) transparent
(for example, [http://blog.boxedice.com/2010/03/07/choosing-a-price-for-
you...](http://blog.boxedice.com/2010/03/07/choosing-a-price-for-your-webapp-
or-startup-using-multivariate-testing/) ) and (3) probably profitable, but I
don't have the numbers.

------
amix
Worked on <http://Todoist.com> while in university. Not really my active
startup, but Todoist is bootstrapped, profitable ($1k+) and one of the largest
task managers on the net.

If I was to bootstrap something again then I would do it in my free time until
it took off (like patio11). If you have any questions feel free to ask :-)

~~~
boundlessdreamz
It seems from the homepage that Todoist.com is free. How do you make money?
Ads? Can you share more numbers?

~~~
amix
Freemium, but I don't promote it that much. When people pay they expect
support, new features and new iterations - something that I don't have time to
provide as Todoist isn't my active startup.

For numbers: Todoist has 100.000+ users and only a few % paying customers -
enough to cover costs and make it profitable.

~~~
decipher
Todoist is by far my favourite task manager, and has helped me complete
countless projects over the last couple of years.

great stuff amix.

------
icey
There are quite a few successful bootstrappers on The Business of Software
forum:

<http://discuss.joelonsoftware.com/default.asp?biz>

~~~
sdrinf
Would you mind linking a few examples, by pointing to their revenue confession
posts?

~~~
icey
I don't have any of the comments bookmarked, but I'm sure you could find them
with a tiny amount of Googling.

------
Wump
We (iTeleport) meet these criteria. We just started our blog a couple of weeks
back:

<http://blog.iteleportmobile.com/>

Our latest post details some revenue numbers:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1329108>

We're going to try to keep posting actively...

------
OmarIsmail
We (productwiki.com) are 100% bootstrapped - no debt financing, no government
grants. Though this year we finally started doing tax credits, so that's not a
bad influx of free money. We aren't transparent about the numbers but I can
tell you that we have 5 full-time employees (including the founders) making
decent to good wages, and a few regular contractors. That should give you a
ballpark.

------
jonpaul
Ummm, I'm not sure I agree with you financial definition of success. But,
after all... it is your definition. I meet the criteria. I don't consider my
business financially successful, yet. Although we make on average $2k a month
and have made as much as $4k a month. Our blog is <http://techneur.com>

------
cullenking
While we haven't been too open about our business (lack of time!),
<http://ridewithgps.com> qualifies on income and the fact we are bootstrapped.
We are generating just under $1k a month in donations from users right now
(yeah, just donations as we don't have our paid accounts ready yet), and a
small licensing deal puts us over the top of those numbers.

We are working on becoming more transparent with our business, as there is
decent appetite for any information in regards to the bootstrapping process. I
think I just got motivated enough to write a decent blog post this evening.

------
maxklein
That guy Kreci that just posted his info recently. He made 1500 last month.

~~~
sdrinf
Mind a link?

~~~
maxklein
Kreci.net

------
dstik
The blog: The Art of Non-Conformity by Chris Guillebeau
(<http://chrisguillebeau.com/3x5/>), writes a lot about bootstrapping and how
he started out, he now has a self sustaining blog and affords to travel all
over the world and blog about it. It's a great blog, lots of inspiration, and
I think it'll definitely meet your criteria.

------
dabent
I believe that fleaflicker.com was done by a single, bootstrapped founder. It
was acquired by AOL. The founder, Ori Schwartz, did write some on Reddit
(where I heard about this) and likely elsewhere.

An older story was Bob Parson's development of his tax software company, which
was acquired by Intuit for 64 million. He's quite transparent about it, to say
the least.

------
justinchen
We fit into this criteria. Not great about blogging about it...ok, we sort of
suck about blogging in general, but feel free to email me if you want to talk.

<http://www.twobitoperation.com/> menuism, the wedding lens, pickfu

------
erikpukinskis
Not me. I launched <http://sproutrobot.com> last week. Revenue so far is $160.
Profit is like minus $1000 YTD. :)

------
sosuke
As soon as I meet your criteria I'll point you to my blog.

------
kwiat
Probably semi-transparent, but 37signals/Basecamp?

------
ahoyhere
Freckle earns nearly $10,000/mo in revenue: <http://letsfreckle.com/>

Our blog is kinda sparse now but I'm fairly open on HN. :) And I'll be writing
more about business specifically at <http://unicornfree.com/>.

EDIT: Totally bootstrapped, launched Dec 2008. There are 4 of us, but I'm the
owner. We have a profit-sharing agreement with our partners.

~~~
sdrinf
Your shit-free religion seems delicious. Especially this part:

"... The discussion always seems to revolve around funding, or getting
acquired, and retiring.

Or growth. Or hiring. Or tech tricks. Or it’s about affiliates and IM
products, and getting rich off teaching people’s parrots to talk.

Or it’s about hyper-optimization, and split-testing which way you should
orient the toilet paper roll. (The answer is over, not under, by the way.)

Or everyone in the group agrees that they are working on the next big
breakthrough, when really they’re just building a social network for dogs.

..."

I feel your pain -I'm also reading HN. Looking forward seeing your take.

