

Ask HN: is there a place for single-person bootstrapped software businesses? - dottedmag

I was thinking and trying to starting my own bootstrapped (read: very little money upfront) software business (not a consultancy) for some time.<p>The situation as I understand it:<p>B2C. Lots of VC-backed companies which can afford to make their products and websites pretty. Expensive, I can't.<p>B2B. Selling to businesses requires a lot of sales work. Expensive.<p>B2D. Very crowded space, also a lot of companies with funding.<p>Is there still a place for single-person bootstrapped company which cannot afford to spend money or time on anything, but the product itself?<p>A little background: I live in the remote part of the world where most of the IT is doing local business support, and unable to relocate any time soon. I am also stuck with full-time job to support my family and repay mortgage. Laws here make it very expensive to employ people and nearly impossible to fire employees.
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icoder
Assuming you can code, you have internet access and you'll have some spare
time. Especially in software, those three could make up for the lack of money!

VC backing is nice but not a bliss on all sides. In your situation, without VC
funding, you'd keep your freedom, you'd not be distracted by money, you can't
run out of money and your strongest asset can't go anywhere, cause that is
yourself.

With respect to the latter, this means that it is wise to foster this one
asset: improve your tech skills, market knowledge, business skills and your
network (and networking skills). If you're someone dreaming of your company
you'll find this fun to work on.

Having a fulltime job that helps you improve relevant skills is a plus, as is
a job / boss where you could reduce working hours (and salary of course) in
small steps.

There's a few ways to go from here. You could work per hour. The cool part is
that this would enable you to free yourself from your daytime job bit by bit.
The downside is that it requires work. As you describe it, this is limited in
your area, but perhaps you should do a more in depth market analysis to be
sure? Also, you could work for people remotely via the internet, there are
many websites that bring work and workers together. Whether this can help you
will depend a bit on what country you live in, and how your monthly wage is
compared to that in other countries.

The other option is to bootstrap your own product. Read Tim Ferris' 4 hour
workweek for inspiration. This depends on a good idea, a bit of luck, how you
execute it and your patience. You can balance your webdesign skills a bit by
using tools like 'Bootstrap'. Don't worry too much about this part if you are
building your own product, look at Reddit, Amazon, Hackers News: the relation
between use and looks is pretty noisy!

It is not impossible and bootstrapping has been preferred by many over VC
money. Given your personal situation, you do need a lot of patience and put in
a lot of time and effort. But as long as you learn from it, and enjoy it, it
is all worth it.

Good luck!

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brudgers
The HN bubble often leads people to believe that VC investment is a mark of
success. But there is no reason to sell part of your business and swing for
the fences other than your own desire to do so.

In the circumstances you describe, the odds of your business throwing off fuck
you money are about the same as if you were in Silicon Valley - almost zero.
Yes, being in the valley improves your odds some, but the vast majority of
startups still go bust.

The only way to lower your odds is to do nothing. Then you will never have the
experience gained from having failed on your first, second and third forays
into entrepreneurship. Standing still, it is impossible to change direction.

Make something and see what happens because what happens might be good
fortune.

~~~
rony1986
Getting a lot VC funds for start ups some time treated as a sucess, b'cause
VC's invest money into your firm most due to they believe that the start up
has some potential. But this is not the ultimate thing. As somebody said 90%
of the start ups are failures. Single person bootstrap start up can be
successful. look at the case of Instapaper.(<http://www.instapaper.com/>)

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bayesianhorse
Sounds like you are out of luck, mostly.

If you don't have time, skills, freedom or money for a startup, can't make
someone else to do the hard work for you otherwise, then you can't really
start up a programming something business.

Solutions would be to decrease your liabilities, for example get rid of the
mortgaged house and/or get a less time consuming job. Your family might have
something against that, though...

Other than that, start a business around a website. Maybe something around
bitcoins. Maybe a game. In this type of thing time to completion doesn't
matter, user support or sales almost doesn't matter... Of course, lack of
skills does matter a lot there...

~~~
dottedmag
Hey, I definitely do have skills, but they are just not web design skills:
I've got a plenty of diverse software engineering experience, ranging from QA
to leading software engineering teams and to designing network protocols
(besides a lot of code written).

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jamiemchale
"Is there still a place for single-person bootstrapped company which cannot
afford to spend money or time on anything, but the product itself?"

If you have time to spend on the product then you also have time to spend on
the research, the marketing, the promotion, and the interaction with your
customers.

A business isn't purely about the product - there is so much more you have to
do to make it successful.

