Bootstrapping a task manager without investors: why we’re doing it anyway
We didn’t build TaskJect because we dreamed of launching a startup.
We built it because we were tired of tools that didn’t match how we worked.
🧩 Jira felt too heavy.
🧩 Trello too basic.
🧩 Notion too unstructured.
And everything else had either too many features or too much noise.
So instead of fighting with tools, we created one.
TaskJect was born from internal team needs —
just 6 of us working after hours, building a tool we’d actually want to use every day.
No funding.
No launch parties.
Just real usage, honest feedback, and steady progress.
It’s been intense, but we’re getting small wins:
people stick around, use the features we struggled to design, and say “This is exactly what we needed.”
As PM at Teamcamp, I bootstrapped our SaaS PM tool from the same Jira/Trello frustrations – started internally with a small team, iterated on feedback, and hit sustainable growth without funding. Building for real needs creates that 'exactly what we needed' magic. What's your go-to tactic for turning early user feedback into feature priorities?
That's awesome to hear — Teamcamp looks really solid! Totally agree: building from real needs keeps everything grounded.
Right now, our tactic is super direct: we log every piece of feedback (even small passing comments), then look for patterns across multiple users or teams.
If a feature request pops up 3–4 times in a week — it moves to the top of the roadmap.
We also weigh effort vs impact heavily, especially since we’re a small team.
What worked best for you when it came to filtering noise vs real needs?
Really like what you’re doing. We’ve felt the same frustration with most tools on the market — too rigid or too noisy.
But to be honest, I’m not sure a task manager can scale meaningfully without funding.
Curious how you plan to grow and compete in such a saturated space?