A presentation about the lessons learned through both the good and bad decisions that we feel we've made while bootstrapping Sifter. Evolving this into a book that should be out mid-March 2013. http://startingandsustaining.com
person, team, and application is different. Take it with a grain of salt. There are plenty of successful businesses for which this stuff wouldn’t be true. Disclaimer
Bootstrapping We actually started with $16,000. We spent $10,000 on startup costs. We spent the other $6,000 on advertising after launch. Totally possible to do it with less, but the money made it much less stressful. *
consulting or services) Software Product It should literally make money when you’re asleep. In our case, billing runs nightly and automatically puts money into our account. Services businesses can’t scale exponentially. One person can only do so much work. *
Pre-Sifter Salary Full-time Quit Job Launch Idea Engaged Wedding Buy House Honeymoon First Child Move Move Again Europe Puppy Most Challenging Time of My Life
married, bought a house, moved twice, went on a honeymoon, went to Europe, and had a child. Point being that while it’s not easy to make sweeping life changes, it’s certainly not impossible.
roller coaster unlike anything you have ever experienced. You flip rapidly from day-to-day – one where you are euphorically convinced you are going to own the world, to a day in which doom seems only weeks away and you feel completely ruined, and back again. Over and over and over. And I’m talking about what happens to stable entrepreneurs. Marc Andreessen
downs. Now, I try not to worry about anything until it’s been a trend for a week. (That’s not to say I ignore it. I just don’t worry about it until it’s a “real” problem.)
more than a side project. With operating costs, $1,000/mo. of revenue is nothing, and running a hosted web app isn’t worth it. It didn’t get “easy” until it supported me full-time and had profit of its own.
a designer first and developer second. Keith is more of a business person. Would have been nice to have someone focused exclusively on tech. Ultimately managed just fine, though.
Made a mistake that led to 8 hours of data loss. Offered credit to all affected customers. Cost us about 10% of that month’s revenue. All customers were understanding and grateful.
stress out if it took me longer than an hour to answer an email. Nobody ever expected hour- turnaround except me. I’m harder on myself than even our most demanding customers.
do other shady things. Best to just do whatever it takes to make them happy and move on. Spending time on toxic customers only hurts your other customers.
idealistic and thinking people would go on hold for 2-3 months at a time. 85% never returned. They simply went on hold instead of canceling. We continue to have an obligation, and they don’t.
ideas. Forced me to clarify my thinking. Writing and explaining things has a weird way of forcing you to understand something better than you would have otherwise.
to filter people and test the billing system. We charged $5 per month just as a barrier to entry. People will use any piece of crap software if it’s free.
revenue. Weren’t afraid to spend money, but tried to make sure that we always ended the month with more money than we started. A yearly budget is key because many significant costs are not monthly and would otherwise be off the radar until it’s too late.
DNS Management Exception Management File Storage Transaction Fees SSL Bookkeeping Accounting Legal System Administration Team Software Business Insurance Health Insurance Merchant Account Domains Your Cost of Living Know Your Costs
of founders, location, and previous entrepreneurial experience – have little bearing on a startup’s likelihood of failure. The most consistent predictor of failure, rather, was a startup’s propensity to engage in premature scaling. Startup Genome Project Interviewed 3200 Startups (Quote is really focused on “high-growth” startups.)
hosting environment. The setup isn’t trivial, and the up front costs are significant, but it’s worth it. Easier to scale. More redundant. More insulated from problems. Faster.