I will possibly bootstrap a software product in the near future, but the hard part for me is to decide in which market I can find a niche.
I find it hard to develop a new solution in a crowded market. I want to develop a product I am convinced of, but doubt often gets in the way, especially if the market is crowded.
I also wonder how these services get their first paying customers.
I bootstrapped my company over 2012, and we now employ three full-time people and adding more.
What we did to get out first few users was simple: we wanted to build cool software, and we had a few ideas. We took our favorite, built a cool landing page that spelled out the features with a demo, and then set it free on Twitter. We had 1500 early beta signups before we went into private beta. We now have over 100,000 users and we never spend money advertising.
In terms of getting our first paying customers: we just charged for it. People will pay for things that they think are valuable. However, pricing and the pricing "model" have been the #1 source of missed opportunities and optimization points for us (though we have fixed a lot of that), so they are really important to think about.
I am going through the same thing. Everyone says enter an existing market because you already know people are willing to pay for it. But I am afraid that the existing solutions have soaked up all the customers. How am I supposed to get those customers?
Thanks for the links!
Do you know of communities of self-employed/micro-entrepreneurs? I'm not interested in a booming startup scenario, rather looking to build a sustainable business.
I've seen a few people ask this, and a few efforts towards building an online forum for bootstrappers to hang out. But they all tend to fizzle out.
The community is scattered around the web on blogs, Twitter, Mixergy and here. I think that's a good thing - don't seek yet another place to shoot the breeze. Just get stuff done, and when you have a specific question, seek answers from experienced people in existing forums.
"existing solutions have soaked up all the customers"
Please think of a case where this has happened to you as a customer.
As an example: I've been leasing servers for over a decade. The industry is mature, is worth billions each year, and has plenty of competitors. I've leased servers from many companies, big and small.. one even that had 2 people working there.
Sometimes I had requirements that only large companies met, and other I did not have such requirements, and considered smaller companies.
Customers are constantly leaving and signing up at all of the large services (for a variety of reasons -- customer service problems, fees, inability to meet a new requirement, etc, etc, etc). I challenge you to find a provider that does NOT have some unhappy customers. You'll get your chance when they leave and are looking for a new provider.
Going after a new market often require much more resources than going after an established market. You'll need to spend a lot of time branding yourself and educating your users about your services.
What often works well for people is to enter a market that already exists and to understand the problem the existing solutions don't address.
By focusing on these problem and solving these extremely well, you'll be able to attract a small subset of users who will want to pay for your service rather than your competitors.
You'll have plenty of opportunity to steal customer from your competitors (there's no way someone can address 100% of the market).
There are plenty of markets that are ripe for disprution.
I've gone through this dilemma as a solo founder and experimented with both (existing & new market). I ended up choosing an existing market. Some thoughts:
Make sure that the market you're going into is growing and not shrinking. In a growing market, there will always be new customers.
People like choice. You don't have to compete feature to feature with your competitors. Stand out somehow. Identify how you truly differentiate and make sure that everybody knows this.
The good thing about an existing market is that people are already looking for what you're selling. All you have to do is be there, be different and be findable. The bad thing is that the competitors are mature and it takes a lot more effort to actually compete.
The most important thing which matters to customers is the kind of support you provide to them. Just take an open source bug tracking software and provide "incredible" support to your customers and that will be a win. This has been proven time and again. And when I say "incredible" support that also means proactively solving problems/pain-points for your customers.
Most corporations spend a big part of their IT budget on "Support". Think about it for a bit and you will start to get a clear picture of what really matters.
> But I am afraid that the existing solutions have soaked up all the customers
I used to think this aswell, and I was proven wrong. I think this assumption is almost always wrong. Unless you are building a facebook competitor, you will find customers, regardless how crowded the market is.
I hear this question a lot. Unfortunately, there's not a simple answer. In my case, it was a matter of blogging for years, building up a modest, but interested, audience, having about 2,000 Twitter followers at the time, and spending about $5,000 on advertising once we had been live for about 3 months. I also blogged extensively about the process of designing the application and some of the other steps involved.
Really, though, it's not the first customers that are hard. It's maintaining and continuing to work on it and grow it during the time where growth isn't amazing and it isn't yet a full-time job.
I find it hard to develop a new solution in a crowded market. I want to develop a product I am convinced of, but doubt often gets in the way, especially if the market is crowded.
I also wonder how these services get their first paying customers.