Going all in, on yourself: The Bootstrap Sabbatical
Hey Indie Hackers!
I wanted to announce something I put out in the public today..
And, I'm hoping it will resonate with some of you. Or, BETTER, maybe even inspire some of you to do your own.
So here goes..
We're probably all part of the IH community because when we're not getting or giving great advice, we probably like keeping on top of the latest across business and tech, and some of us, like me, might even be looking to get inspired or capitalise on some of those new opportunities and start their next business or launch a new product.
Well, this can be really hard if you're already working incredibly hard in some other demanding environment (especially another startup!).
You either A) don't have the time, and if you can find the time, B) you might not have the mental capacity.
So, I’ve decided to do a crazy thing, and that is to quit my job without any tangible thing to keep me afloat – another job or a seriously good idea that is bound to make me billions..
Starting today, I've decided to "take some time off" and embark on a "Bootstrap Sabbatical".
So, WTF is a Bootstrap Sabbatical?
I knocked up a personal site and detailed what it means and why you might start one: https://kevjoc.com/the-bootstrap-sabbatical/
And detailed my own personal thesis around what I hope to achieve here: https://kevjoc.com/my-bootstrap-sabbatical/
I'd love to hear your thoughts
If you're doing something similar, have any ideas you want to team up on (I'm an ex-Founder and specialise in Startup and Scale-up Operations), or any other feedback (like groups, courses, communities, newsletters, podcasts you think would be worth joining on the journey), I'd love to hear from you!
Good luck on the journey. What's the first thing you'll do to try and start your first profitable business?
Thanks for the well wishes and the question. First thing is really working through my list of startup ideas, laying them all out and ranking them across a few variables such as:
To expand on those things:
Ideally you want to try find something that is:
That's the unicorn!
So basically starting with my list, working out the best combo for starting with easier wins and then working to more complex businesses. Then assessing those against the market (demand / competitors) and potential revenue.
Along with this I'm completing a no-code course to master my ability to ship and execute quickly.
Hope that answers your question! Let me know if you have any more.
It seems like you've really thought this through. How long did it take you to put this framework together?
The above validation framework came to me actually just whilst sitting down at a cafe after I quit my job. It was my first day of "Freedom" so went to cafe to work through my list. I've had a whole list of ideas and didn't know where to start so had to come up with a way to think through them; always best to use data points, so I came up with the above, sitting with pen and paper.
I've since added this to a Notion Kanban board, and am playing with making it more effective. If it proves awesome maybe I'll share it as part of the journey - need to validate it first. I was tossing up between adding it to Notion for better note taking or Airtable for better data point i.e. calculation a total score for each idea.
I spend more time on Notion so have now typed up my notes from my notepad and added to Notion.
A good friend of mine, with limited time, also loves validating ideas via data and together we created an excel sheet that weighs data points and we've shared that in places like Trends.co.
Otherwise, I've been helping early-stage founders validate ideas for close to ten years, so have quite a few years of thinking frameworks. So it might've taken a day, but its really an accumulation of years' of thinking about it - reminds me of this Picasso adage: https://quoteinvestigator.com/2018/01/14/time-art/
I hope by the end of this Bootstrap Sabbatical I'll have cemented a great
framework that I can share with more confidence!
(Otherwise, I realise maybe you were asking about the Sabbatical itself, it was on my mind for a long time, so maybe 6 weeks of mostly validating with friends, family and confidantes, and took me about 2 weeks to write the thesis and put together the site - with a few theme hiccups in between!)